The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf
by Iniga
Summary: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn’t always pretty. Immediately after Deathly Hallows and continuing through that summer. Complete!
1. Present Ending

The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

_**Note**__: This is not a romance and I will place virtually no emphasis on romantic pairings. However, I will acknowledge the pairings that were canon at the end of __Deathly Hallows__. If that's a problem, back out now._

_**Spoilers**__: All books. ALL. Yes, that does include __Deathly Hallows__. If you somehow haven't read it yet and don't want to be spoiled, back out now._

_Still with me? Then let's go._

* * *

"That wand's more trouble than it's worth," said Harry. "And quite honestly," he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime."

He tucked the Elder Wand into the waistband of his jeans. He would have liked nothing better than to rid himself of its presence right then, but the castle was still full of celebrators and mourners who saw everything, especially if it concerned him. Besides, he wasn't sure he had the strength left to walk to Gryffindor Tower, let alone dispose of an unbeatable wand so that no one would ever possess it again.

No sooner had Harry thought, not for the first time, that he was very tired, than his vision blurred of its own accord. He grabbed at a chair for support. Ron and Hermione reached to steady him, but he straightened up before he felt their touch.

"Are you all right?" asked Hermione anxiously. Harry was painfully aware of the eyes of the portraits boring through him.

"I need sleep," he told them truthfully. "You must, too. Do you think we can get into Gryffindor Tower?"

Ron dropped the invisibility cloak unceremoniously over Harry's head. "Lead on, mate."

Months, even years, of training to be aware of the slightest sign of danger deserted Harry as he dragged himself from the Headmaster's office to the dormitory that had been his own for six wonderful years. He heard nothing; his ears buzzed faintly as if someone had cast _Muffliato_ nearby. He forgot about the trick step and sank in past his knee; Ron had to grab Harry around his invisible waist and heave him up to the landing.

At last, they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, still at her assigned post and sharing several bottles of champagne with her friend Violet. "Password?"

Ron and Hermione stared at her. Neither of them had been in Gryffindor Tower all year.

"Fortuna major?" guessed Ron, randomly trying something that Harry vaguely remembered had once, long ago, been the password. "Caput draconis?"

"No password, no entry," said the Fat Lady firmly.

With so much effort that it was frankly embarrassing, Harry pulled off his cloak. "I'm Harry Potter, the Chosen One, and this morning I defeated Lord Voldemort, so please let me go to sleep now," he tried.

The Fat Lady swung forward. "Go in, then."

"Kind of a long password," said Ron as he climbed inside, keeping one hand around Harry's shaking arm.

The Gryffindor common room looked much like Harry had remembered it. There were a few people—whether or not they were students Harry couldn't be sure—sprawled on the comfortable chairs, but they were so full of revelry or grief that they paid Harry, Ron, and Hermione no mind.

The circular dormitory, too, looked just as it always had. Harry flung himself onto the bed that had been his. He was still painfully hungry, but it was beyond his ability to remedy the situation. He knew that he could sleep even when he was ravenous. Thanks to the Dursleys, he had learned to do so at a young age.

The bed caressed every inch of his aching body. It remembered him; it had waited for him; it had known he would come back one more time. Unconsciousness was tugging at him. He couldn't tell whether he was falling asleep or passing out, and he didn't care. Ron's and Hermione's voices droned senselessly at the edge of his awareness. He couldn't make out their words. If it was important, they'd hex him awake.

The sudden, overwhelming scent of chicken forced his eyes open and his body to sit upright. Ron was laughing, enthusiastically though not unkindly, and holding a sandwich close to Harry's face. "Knew that'd get him," said Ron, as Harry grabbed at the food and shoved it into his mouth.

"Where did this come from?" Harry asked unintelligibly through a mouthful of sandwich. Hermione rolled her eyes with what was either exasperation or affection. Ron, who was also eating happily, pointed at Neville. Harry had no more idea how Neville might have gotten there than how the food might have gotten there. He considered questioning Neville as he swallowed, but decided to thrust the second half of the sandwich into his mouth instead.

"Luna said you wanted to be alone, and I figured you'd come here," said Neville simply, lounging against his own bed at his ease. "I wanted to make sure you weren't hungry. You can't go back down there without getting mobbed." He gave Harry the same look he had given him the night before when Harry had told him to kill the snake. "Anyway, I'll let you alone now."

"You can stay," said Harry hastily. Neville seemed to feel that he was talking to Harry, and not to the Chosen One, and that was all Harry needed. That and food and sleep and Ron and Hermione. "If you wanted. It's as much your room as ours. More, since we dropped out."

Neville gave an almost imperceptible, grateful little nod. "Alone sounds good," and Harry knew that Neville meant _alone_ the same way he did. It had nothing to do with how many people were there and everything to do with how they looked at you.

The sandwiches made Harry feel a little more like he had some connection to his body, but sleep was still too close for him to hold out much longer. "Do you think we need to keep watch?" he asked the others. If Voldemort's last followers wanted to give a last gift to their departed master, any of their lives would be a fine choice.

"I'll take first shift," Neville volunteered hastily. "I don't think I could sleep, but if I need to I'll wake one of you."

Harry's thanks died on his lips. Secure in the knowledge that for the moment they were safe, he slid into blackness.

X

Harry was next aware of a bang and a blinding flash of light.

"Expeliarmus!" he heard himself shout before he was properly awake. He had leapt from his bed to a proper dueling position; his blood pounded in his veins and his wand was tight in his fist.

Other voices had shouted, too; he had heard Ron cry out "impedimenta!" so he knew that he, at least, was safe for the moment.

An instant later, he registered Seamus's voice: "It's Professor McGonagall."

Harry groped for his glasses and found them on the table beside his bed, where they had been for every night of the six years he had called this room his home.

He hadn't heard Seamus arrive. Nor Dean. Nor Lavender and Paravati. But they were all there with Ron and Hermione and Neville, all of them who should have been finishing their final year as Gryffindors. All of them had obviously awakened suddenly, all of their wands were drawn, and all of them were looking to him as if for some kind of signal.

"Don't put your wands down," he told the others as his vision cleared. "She might be an imposter." Voldemort was dead, but that hardly assured him of anything just yet.

"Very well, Mr. Potter, why don't you determine whether or not I'm an imposter?" asked Professor McGonagall with equal parts acidity and amusement.

Harry couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt at accusing this woman of being anyone but who she claimed to be. He recalled, with a rush of warmth, her declaration in the Ravenclaw common room: _Potter belongs in __**my**__ house. _Still, Mad-Eye Moody would be rolling in the grave he didn't have if Harry let this go.

"What happened when I went in for career advice my fifth year?"

She didn't smile, but Harry knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was genuine fondness in her eyes. "I told you I would help you become an auror if it was the last thing I did."

Harry didn't smile, either, but that was because he was trying not to blush. It was strange to understand, viscerally, that his no-nonsense, disciplinarian head of house genuinely _liked_ him. He turned to look around at his former classmates, all alert and wary with wands raised, as a way of distracting himself. "That's her. Wands down."

They obeyed. It was a mark of how much things had changed in the last year that Harry didn't find it at all odd to issue commands and have them obeyed with admirable precision.

It was a mark of how much things had changed in the last year that not even Hermione looked the slightest bit contrite at having raised her wand to a professor.

"Sorry, Professor," Harry said, more as a courtesy than a real apology.

"I would have been quite surprised if you'd reacted any other way," she told him. She pointed her wand at Harry in turn. "Tell me, Harry, where do Vanished objects go?"

"How's he supposed to know that?" Ron muttered; meanwhile, Hermione's eyes were bouncing back and forth between Harry and McGonagall in a way that Harry would have found insulting if it hadn't been justified. Harry had a sneaking suspicion that if he had been Sorted into Ravenclaw, he would have spent a good many nights sleeping in the hallway, waiting for someone else to answer the eagle door knocker's questions. He had a new respect for Luna, Cho, and all the other Ravenclaws he had known.

"Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything," he told her, with a mockingly superior glance at a surprised Hermione, who now appeared to be thinking that perhaps that answer had proved that he was _not_ Harry Potter.

"Nicely phrased. Do you answer for the others?"

"Yes," Harry agreed, even though he had an odd desire to watch Professor McGonagall test each of them in turn.

"I suggest that you all bring yourselves and your belongings to the Great Hall within the hour. Those of you who temporarily find yourselves without homes to go to may very well end up staying for a few more weeks, but we do need to sort ourselves out." Her eyes flickered over each of them in turn, resting a second too long on Harry. "I believe most of you are well-situated."

"Mum says Harry's coming with me," Ron put in, before Harry had a chance to wonder. Visiting Ron's family during school had been one thing, but now Harry was an adult and the Weasleys were in mourning. Harry swallowed hard. He wasn't ready to think about Fred yet.

"Very well. You are all, of course, welcome to help us reassemble the school this summer when your other obligations have been met."

Harry turned over the exact meaning of the delicate phrase "other obligations" in his mind. He found too many answers. Funerals. A newly orphaned godson he had never met. Hermione had her parents to rescue from Australia, and perhaps Harry should inquire as to the state of the Dursleys. Now that Kingsley Shacklebolt was the Minister of Magic, Harry had to decide how much to tell him about Voldemort, and then maybe Kingsley would help him decide what to say to Wizarding Radio and the Daily Prophet. He was fairly sure he couldn't say nothing, which would have been his first choice.

His mind was suddenly so full that he didn't mind not being allowed to return to sleep. He glanced at the watch that had once been Ron's Uncle Fabian's and thought that perhaps it had stopped working; it claimed that more than fourteen hours, not the blink of an eye, had passed since he'd lain down to sleep. Irritably, he reached for Ron's wrist to check his watch, and found that it gave the same answer. The others had taken their turns keeping watch without waking him. He knew they'd all meant well, but he still hated to be singled out as much as he always had. At least that was coming to an end now. There was no Voldemort; there was no need for a Chosen One.

McGonagall departed with a swish of robes. The girls went scurrying back toward their own dormitory, murmuring about getting ready, wands drawn "just in case." Professor McGonagall hadn't so much as raised an eyebrow to find boys and girls sleeping in the same dormitory, though it had probably been rather obvious that they had not been having an orgy of any sort.

And, Harry reminded himself for the umpteenth time, they were no longer students. They weren't boys and girls; they were men and women, legally of age, and veterans of a deadly war.

A few moments later, he and Ron and Dean and Seamus and Neville walked together down the stairs and to the Great Hall for the last time. For the past year, Harry had had nothing but "last times." The last time he'd left Privet Drive. The last time he'd played inter-house Quidditch. The last time he'd seen Remus, or Tonks, or Fred alive… but he wasn't ready to think about that.

The tables in the Great Hall were again laden with food—it took more than a battle for the future of the world to keep the house-elves from their appointed duties—but, like the night before, wizards and witches of all ages were seated in causal groups that were not drawn along house lines.

One thing that hadn't changed was the way so many eyes focused on Harry when he entered, and the way a murmur ripped through the throng: _What did he do? How did he do it?_

Ignoring this, as well as the applause, Harry and Ron instinctively sought and sat on either side of Hermione. Soon the other Weasleys, all red-eyed and weirdly subdued, were around them. Ginny placed herself beside Harry as if she had always belonged there, which, Harry supposed, she had.

Hermione, on Harry's other side, was fumbling under the table with what looked suspiciously like one of the horrific homework planners she had once given Harry and Ron as poor excuses for Christmas presents.

"Hermione," said Harry out of the corner of his mouth, "We don't have any homework. We barely have a school." He glanced upward at a strange mixture of enchanted ceiling and actual sky.

"I'm not doing homework," she hissed back just as quietly. "I'm drawing up a schedule. Do you know how many things we'll need to do? The funerals alone—there are over fifty dead, not that we knew them all— and the bodies aren't even claimed yet, they're setting that up now—"

"Good thinking," he told her, and she looked mollified. "First priority?"

"My parents," she said firmly, and Harry nodded. "And I suppose we'll—you'll— have to make some kind of public statement about what happened. No one will let you be until you do."

"I was wondering if _**we**_," he said with emphasis, not wanting Hermione to believe, even temporarily, that she and Ron were going to leave this last hurdle to him after a seven-year six-legged race, "should talk to Kingsley, er, Minister Shacklebolt, first. In case he has ideas about what exactly we should say."

Hermione nodded. "Good idea. I'd forgotten we had a competent Minister of Magic. What about Professor McGonagall? Should we invite her, too? I mean, she's got to be the Head of Hogwarts, maybe not officially—"

"Definitely," Harry agreed. "But no one else. Kingsley, McGonagall, you, me, and Ron."

He glanced at Ron, who hadn't paid Harry and Hermione's conversation the slightest mind. Instead, Ron, like the rest of his family, was pretending he wasn't staring at George, the remaining half of what had so recently been a matched set.

The day before, Ron, like Harry, had been too overwhelmed to dwell much on anything that had happened, even the death of his brother. Now Harry could see that there was nothing in the world for Ron other than the knowledge that he would never see Fred again.

He followed Ron's gaze to George. Unlike Ron, though, Harry couldn't look at George for more than a second or two. Harry had seen the corpses of children and the fate to which a mutilated soul was condemned, but he did not think he had ever seen anything so awful as this waxen-faced echo of George Weasley, without a joke at the ready, a light in his eyes, or a twin brother.

Fred, Harry knew, was like his parents and Sirius and Remus: he had moved on and he was happy. But whatever Fred was, George was the opposite in the same brutal way a Horcrux was the opposite of a human being. Harry felt a wave of something like irritation at the dead for being quite so pleased about it all while the living were—not that he was thinking about any of the newly dead. He couldn't keep looking at George. Instead, he returned his attention to Hermione.

Hermione, though, had shifted her focus to Ron. Her hand rested on his arm with a weird kind of grace which Harry had never seen in her before, but which he suddenly knew had always been there, hidden. When Ron looked back at Hermione, there was a kind of wonder shining through the mask of pain, and something even deeper in Ron asserted itself as Hermione murmured their plans to him.

Ron nodded. "I'll be there. We'll do that, and that's it."

Hermione stood. "I'll check with McGonagall."

In Hermione's absence, Ron resumed staring at George. On Harry's other side, Ginny was mutilating her eggs as if they, too, had lately laid siege to Hogwarts.

To a man, Ron's brothers looked like they'd already been crying or wanted to start. Ginny, instead, had taken on the hard look that she got every time she did a hard thing. She caught Harry's eye briefly, but said nothing. There was nothing to be said, not yet.

Hermione returned quickly. "Kingsley will be back here in fifteen minutes, unless you want it to be later, Harry," she told him.

Harry chose not to dwell on the fact that he had expressed a desire to speak to the Minister of Magic the day after war's end and the Minister had dropped everything to come to his side. Still, this was better than Rufus Scrimgeour showing up uninvited and attempting to _force_ Harry to speak to him.

"Meet you then," Harry told her. "There's one other person I have to talk to first." His hand grazed Hermione's shoulder and then Ginny's, and he slipped into the shadows to look for Neville.

It didn't take long to find him. He was sitting with his grandmother, Luna, and her father. They all seemed very happy.

Before Mrs. Longbottom or Mr. Lovegood could react to his presence, Harry got a good grip on Neville. "Excuse me, Neville, could I have a word in private _now_?"

"Of course." Without being told, Neville understood the dangers of standing too long where the throng could see them, and he led Harry swiftly outside into the early summer air. "We can't go back into the castle, everything but the Great Hall and the front entrance are spelled. They're trying to keep track of who's where."

"Right. Neville, we don't have much time—"

"Why's that? He's gone—_isn't he_?" There was a flicker of the old fear that Neville had used to get when confronted with forgotten passwords, bullies, or Professor Snape. The flicker was quickly replaced by the determined, rough-edged Neville Harry had met in the Hog's Head a few days before.

"No, I mean, yes, he's gone. But there's something you ought to know, and I think it's down to you finding out the nasty way or the nastier way."

"Blimey. All right, nasty it is."

Harry drew in his breath, and tried not to look at the white tomb. "Two years ago, when we were in the Ministry, with the prophecies, you—everyone—thought there wasn't one the Death Eaters wanted, or that it was destroyed before anyone knew what it said." Neville listened patiently, intently. "But Dumbledore heard the prophecy when it was made."

"This is the prophecy that made you the Chosen One?" asked Neville in awe.

Harry smiled wryly. "Not exactly. See, eighteen years ago, Professor Trelawny was applying for a job at Hogwarts, and Dumbledore met her at the Hog's Head. He was planning to leave divination out of the curriculum, but while he was with her she made a prediction. Voldemort's spy heard part of it before Dumbledore's brother threw him out."

"And?"

Harry closed his eyes. The words had never, for two years, been far from his thoughts, and now that he had decided to share them with someone other than Ron and Hermione, the butterflies in his stomach threatened to fly away with him.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies."

Neville chuckled humorlessly. "How does that 'not exactly' make you the Chosen One?"

Harry wished Neville would have jumped to the right conclusion right away, but he hadn't either, back when Dumbledore had first shown him the prophecy. "Because it wasn't exact until Voldemort," Harry gestured at the scar on his forehead "marked me. His spy only heard the end. There were two baby boys born that July who had parents working for Dumbledore who had already had three near misses with Voldemort."

Now Neville looked like he was trying hard not to let his jaw drop to the ground. "You and me," he managed at last.

Harry nodded. "It could have meant either of us. Dumbledore thought he chose me because I was the half-blood, like Voldemort. If Voldemort had known about the whole prophecy back then, he might not have done anything. He wouldn't have wanted to mark anyone as his equal."

"He wouldn't have, no." There was a pause. "Thanks for telling me." Harry didn't really know what to say to that. "Anything else?" Neville prompted gently.

"That wasn't enough?" Neville had changed quite a lot over the years, but Harry thought that this was a bit of an under-reaction.

"I guess it's a shock, thinking how different things could have been" said Neville. "But it's over now, isn't it? You were the one he chose, you were the one who brought him down."

"I had help," Harry reminded. "Loads of it."

Neville brushed this off with a hand gesture. "You did it." He laughed again, this time with a hint of amusement. "And if one of us had to go through all that, I'm glad it was you."

"Thanks," said Harry sarcastically, knowing that Neville's life had hardly been easy. They turned back toward the castle; Kingsley would be there soon. "You aren't angry?"

"Angry?"

"That I knew about it and I didn't tell you?"

"You did what you had to do." Neville clapped Harry on the back as they approached the doors. "You're a good friend, Harry."

"You're better," said Harry softly, and then pulled on his invisibility cloak to seek out Kingsley, McGonagall, Ron, and Hermione.

X

Harry, Ron and Hermione agreed to tell Kingsley and Professor McGonagall the everything that included everything. Telling the story was almost as exhausting as living it had been, but when it was done it felt like something awful had been excised from Harry's chest.

They were all in agreement that Harry would not tell the newspapers or Wizarding Radio about the Horcruxes. Harry had always hated the idea of newspapers hiding information from the public; he remembered only too well their insistence that Voldemort had not returned. But keeping the Horcruxes a secret seemed more along the lines of not publishing a complete list of Quidditch fouls. Sometimes, it was better not to give anyone any ideas.

There was more debate about the Hallows. Like the Horcruxes, theirs was a power better left unused. Still, everyone in the Great Hall had heard Harry and Voldemort arguing about the Elder Wand. Harry agreed to speak about the Wand briefly without touching on the Stone or the Cloak.

"All right," said Kingsley in his deep, calm voice when the ordeal was drawing to a close. "We'll have you go on Wizarding Radio to make a brief statement about what you've been doing this last year, omitting what we've decided to omit. There will be a break for an advertisement, and then you'll be asked a few questions—if you have anything to say to the bereaved and the like. The text will be printed in the Prophet tomorrow, and as far as I'm concerned you won't need to speak to them again. Of course, you can if you want to."

"I won't."

Everyone laughed. "That's what I thought," said Kingsley. "I've already announced you'll be receiving the Order of Merlin, First Class. All three of you, of course," and he looked around at Ron and Hermione. "Any thoughts on the ceremony?"

"Not having one?" asked Harry hopefully. Ron looked slightly put-out.

"I'll present it to you quickly, right before you make your statement. Ron and Hermione can have a real ceremony in a few weeks when everything has settled down."

"Great," said Harry, as if speaking to someone like Rita Skeeter could possibly be enjoyable. "Who asks the questions?"

Kingsley smiled. "A new and upcoming Wizarding Radio host I think you'll like. Everything's set up in the Great Hall."

With more than a little trepidation, Harry walked with Kingsley to the Great Hall. Ron, Hermione, and Professor McGonagall trailed after them. The high table where the teachers sat during the school year was covered with magical megaphones and odd little devices that Harry assumed were used to transmit signals to wizarding radios.

He gave a startled cry of delight when he saw who was seated behind the tangle of equipment. "Lee!"

Lee Jordan, like everyone else Harry had seen recently, looked a bit worse for wear, but he grinned back at Harry. "If I say or do anything you don't like, feel free to punch me. Or tell me."

The next half-hour went by more pleasantly than Harry could have imagined. Lee asked no questions that were remotely awkward or required Harry to do much thinking. His comments were as funny as they had always been when he had commentated on inter-house Quidditch matches long ago, although Harry could tell that Lee was forcing himself to be upbeat. Fred Weasley had been one of Lee's closest friends.

The Great Hall was still full of faces staring raptly at Harry, Kingsley, and Lee as they spoke to wizards and witches all over Great Britain through the magical transmitters.

Just as Lee was explaining, during a break to advertise Gladrags Wizard Wear, that Harry need say only one more goodbye before going "home" to the Weasleys, Harry gasped in horror and reached for his wand.

_She's dead_, he reminded himself. _Mrs. Weasley finished her_.

But he was sure he saw Bellatrix Lestrange sliding along the back of the Hall, avoiding contact with all the people who were busy staring at Harry.

Perhaps Bellatrix had had a Horcrux of her own? Perhaps the bundle she carried was a dead unicorn, a dead baby, some innocent creature she had used to prolong her own miserable life.

By the time Harry realized that he had mistaken, not for the first time, Andromeda Tonks for her sister Bellatrix, everyone else in the room had followed his gaze.

Her shoulders back, her movements steady, her grandson (Harry now recognized) in her arms, Mrs. Tonks ignored the gaping of the throng.

But she did spare a glare for Harry that pierced him as cleanly as her sister's sometimes had.

_**TBC. **_


	2. Past Beginning

**The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf**

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

Andromeda had hoped that by appearing at Hogwarts while the Chosen One Who Lived or whatever Harry Potter was calling himself these days was speaking, she would avoid having to do much speaking herself. The plan hadn't been a bad one in theory, but things had not gone according to plan. Harry had noticed her, and everyone else wanted to notice what Harry noticed (which wasn't a bad tactic as survival skills went, but was still irritating from where Andromeda stood).

She hadn't been a Black, in name or in deed, for a quarter of a century. Still, at times like this, the training she had received in her babyhood reasserted itself:

"_You're a Black; of course everyone is looking at you. Don't look back at them. They don't matter and they're looking at you because you do. You're practically royalty. Don't demean yourself."_

None of it was true. She'd known that even as a child, although a desire for self-preservation had kept her from voicing her objections. Instead, she'd waited for the opportune moment and made a clean break. If she had protested as a child, the punishments would have been severe and varied. If she had merely announced that she intended to marry a Muggle-born, her parents would have found a way to remove him from the picture. But announcing that not only had she married a Muggle-born, but that she had taken her NEWTs while already pregnant with his child… that had presented her parents with quite the fait accompli.

Now she had returned to her old school to claim the body of that child.

On the makeshift stage at the front of the Great Hall, Harry Potter and Lee Jordan were talking again, but a few eyes were still trained on Andromeda. Whether they stared because she had been Bellatrix's sister or because she had been—still was—Nymphadora's mother, she didn't know. She also didn't care. She had a choice between remaining aloof and crumbling to pieces, and the former seemed much the best option.

"Mrs. Tonks, this way."

It took her an instant to focus on the voice, which emanated from one of the small rooms beside the Great Hall.

Even though she had known what to expect, it took all of her childhood lessons in dignity and comportment to stop herself from collapsing in a screaming heap the first second she saw the corpses, lovingly laid out row upon row.

Then, all of the bodies save one faded from her vision.

Nymphadora's heart-shaped face bore the frozen, surprised look that was always the remnant of the killing curse. Her hair hung limply off of her head; it had reverted to the dull, mousy brown color it had been the year before when she'd been recovering from her injuries and pining after Remus.

Andromeda shifted Teddy in her arms to run her hand along Nymphadora's cheek. Teddy, his sleep disturbed, attempted to focus on Nymphadora, too, but he gave no sign of recognizing the stiff colorless body as belonging to his mother. A flash of rage swelled in Andromeda as she realized, clearly, that Teddy would have no memories of Nymphadora.

She took his tiny hand in hers and laid it against Nymphadora's face. "This is your mother," she told him in a whisper that did not sound like her own. "But she's gone now."

Teddy could not have understood her, but the soft fringe of hair that covered his warm, fragile head changed suddenly from turquoise to black.

"Mrs. Tonks," said the same voice that had called her into the room. This time, Andromeda forced herself to fight through a wave of dizziness and respond.

"What needs to be done?" she asked coolly, not otherwise greeting the young witch. They had never met; the girl had known her name through some magical or administrative means.

The witch swallowed visibly and looked as if she might subject Andromeda to the usual platitudes: that Nymphadora was at peace, that Nymphadora had felt no pain, that Nymphadora had died the way she would have chosen. Instead, though, she produced a grubby roll of parchment. In dark blue ink, midway down the list of names, was "Lupin, Nymphadora (Tonks)." Just below it was "Lupin, Remus."

"Sign," the witch directed.

Andromeda signed.

"Do you want to take her body now, or do you want someone to arrange to transport it? If you haven't decided how to—what you—"

The girl was obviously a volunteer, doing this awful duty out of the goodness of her heart. Had it been any other way, her incompetence would have been breathtaking and her discomfort preposterous.

"She'll be buried next to her father," Andromeda decreed. "Remus, too, of course." She hadn't even looked for Remus's body, not from lack of fondness, but because she had eyes only for Nymphadora.

The young witch looked down the row of corpses; her flushed face paled. "He was lying next to her," she said distractedly. "They were lying hand-in-hand, I saw them!"

"What's wrong?" asked a new voice from the doorway. Andromeda had only heard that voice a few times, but she knew it. Every witch and wizard in this part of the world, perhaps the whole world, did.

It was Harry Potter.

He walked quickly to the witch and addressed her with obvious familiarity. "Katie, what happened?"

Katie's eyes darted from Harry to Andromeda to the rows of bodies. "Professor Lupin's body. It was here, but it's not now!"

Harry, too, looked over the corpses as if expecting to see something Andromeda and Katie had not. His green eyes seemed to catch on several bodies—Severus Snape's, a young boy's, and Nymphadora's among them—before he came to the obvious conclusion.

"How long've you been standing guard here?" Harry asked Katie.

"Not long—just since a bit before you started speaking. No one's been in to claim a body other than Mrs. Tonks. Well, the Weasleys were taking Fred home when I first—"

Tears started to slip down Katie's cheeks, and she was suddenly much more interested in looking at the ground than at Harry or Andromeda. Harry, in the calming way of someone who was used to taking control when everyone else was going to pieces, sent Katie to fetch the auror who had left her to watch over the bodies of the fallen.

Harry glanced once more at the bodies that seemed to have special meaning for him—Snape's, the boy's, Nymphadora's—before turning his attention to Andromeda.

"I'm sorry," he said, and she could tell that he meant it.

"Thank you."

"Is that," he nodded toward the infant in her arms as if he had never seen such a thing before, "Teddy?"

"Yes." She stared at the baby herself. His hair was still black.

"Is, er, he, I," said Harry. Andromeda sensed that the boy was looking for an invitation to hold the infant he had never met, or at least some sort of confirmation that it had been Remus and Nymphadora's plainly expressed wish that he be Teddy's godfather.

Andromeda levelly met Harry's awkward gaze, and Harry took a step back. Somewhere, in some place where she was not two feet away from the dead body of her only daughter, Andromeda might have found it quite humorous that a boy who had just defeated You-Know-Who was intimidated by her.

Andromeda, though, wasn't in that place where anything was in the least entertaining. She was holding all that was left of Ted and Nymphadora against her chest. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could not give him up, even for an instant, to this gangly boy who looked as though he hadn't had a proper wash in a week and who had probably never held a baby in his life.

Savior of the world or not, godfather or not (and he wasn't, yet, officially), Harry Potter was not going to take Teddy from her, and certainly not if he couldn't summon the nerve to ask.

Something else that might have been amusing in a world where Ted hadn't been hunted down like an animal and Nymphadora hadn't been slaughtered in battle was her reluctance to acknowledge the fact that the most famous wizard in the world had agreed to stand godfather to her grandchild.

X

The first Black baptism Andromeda well remembered had been in honor of her cousin Sirius.

In the four years preceding Sirius's birth, three daughters were born to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Bellatrix, called Bella, was the eldest. Stunning in beauty, even more stunning in cleverness, most stunning of all in stubbornness, Bellatrix had all the Black family could have wanted save a y-chromosome.

Andromeda, called Anna, was just a year younger than Bella. She was the "not-quite" sister. Although she bore a marked, undeniable resemblance to Bella, she wasn't quite as pretty. Although her intelligence was never in question, she wasn't quite as clever as Bella. She wasn't quite as wanted, either; if a child wanted to disappoint the House of Black by being born a _girl_, of all things, the least she could do was be better than every other girl in every measurable way.

Narcissa, called Cissa or Cissy, was born two years after Anna. Her unusually blonde hair caused a tongue or two to whisper that she might not be accurately called a Black at all, but her subversive way of getting all she desired silenced those doubters before she reached a year in age.

It was when Cissa was about a year old, and Anna three, that their cousin Sirius arrived.

His first cry sent pangs of relief though the family. Daughters were well and good. Daughters were indispensable when it came to forming alliances with other wealthy, aristocratic families. Daughters kept histories and secrets; daughters were brilliant innovators; daughters performed great feats of magic. But daughters did not carry on the family line the way sons did.

The Black family threw a grand party to celebrate the day of Sirius's baptism. There had been talk that the honor of being his godfather would go to the Minister of Magic himself, or perhaps to a reclusive but extremely wealthy French wizard. In the end, though, it was the parents of the three Black daughters who stood up as godparents of their first nephew. Nothing was expected to happen to Sirius' own parents, of course, but the family was not willing to take the risk that in the event of disaster anyone who was not a Black would be a force in the life of their young heir.

The gifts given Sirius at the celebration were many and elaborate. Most of them he would never touch; they were symbolic of his place in the world and had nothing to do with the baby himself. The three sisters, too, were less than an afterthought as rich and powerful wizards from around the world strolled from room to room in the family's ancestral home and attempted to impress one another. Bella, Anna, and Cissa sat in a perfect row beside Sirius's crib; they were three objects among many on display. They went un-remarked upon unless one of them happened to move or speak out of turn. In that case, all three were swiftly reprimanded, even Cissa, who was barely old enough to speak and didn't make much sense when she did.

Once Sirius had been baptized, he was firmly in place as the heir. When the spare, christened Regulus, arrived the next year, he was presented with a hard act to follow.

From birth, Sirius was all his parents and grandparents and uncles and cousins had known he would be. As Bella did, he showed the promise of great good looks. The more he grew, in fact, the more he mirrored Bella.

In the first years Anna remembered, the five cousins found themselves thrown together more often than not. A Black child could have no worthy companion but another Black child (or perhaps the pureblood child of a king, but those were so scarce as to be non-existent).

They all sat for lessons with their tutors in an attic room of Anna's aunt's house each morning, but their afternoons were their own. It was of no matter that Sirius was four full years younger than Bella; it was to him that she gravitated, ignoring her sisters. Bella was the oldest and the strongest, and she took what she wanted. Sirius didn't seem to much mind being "taken." He followed in Bella's wake better than Anna could have.

Likewise, almost before Regulus could hold his own head up, he was meeting Cissa's eyes each time Bella tore off with Sirius in hot pursuit. He never had to speak to say _what are your crazy sister and my crazy brother up to this time? _Cissa, who was only rarely interested in things that were not herself, seemed to feel a kinship for her younger cousin almost from the start.

That left Anna by herself to fade into the elaborate woodwork. She didn't mind. She had books to look at and dolls to play with and a cat whose fur she brushed until it shone.

Sometimes Anna liked to play with her sisters and cousins, too, but sometimes she dreaded nothing more.

One afternoon when Anna was nine, Bella stormed into Anna's bedroom wearing the most ridiculous robes Anna had ever seen. At second glance, Anna realized that they were not robes at all, but a gown that a Muggle might wear. (She couldn't be sure; she had never seen a Muggle, but she knew that they did not wear robes.)

"Why are you wearing that?" she asked, even though she didn't usually want to know why Bella did the things she did.

"We're going hunting. Change." Bella threw a garment nearly identical to her own at Anna. Her tone left no room for argument.

"What _is_ this?" Anna didn't have to decide whether she wanted to follow Bella's lead this time; she _couldn't_ follow it. Bella might as well have told her to wear a desk.

"It's a Lady's Hunting Costume From the Fifteenth Century," Bella said proudly, pronouncing each word with all the weight she seemed to feel it was due. "It's so people will think we're Muggles if we're caught."

"Muggles from the fifteenth century?"

Bella snorted in a most unladylike way. "Muggles haven't changed much since then. They're backward, they are." Without further comment, she began removing Anna's robes and shoveling Anna into the costume.

It took both sisters a good deal of work to get the right parts of Anna's body into the corresponding parts of the garment. When they were done, Anna still wasn't sure that they had managed to get it right. She could barely stand up; her movements were so restricted that she doubted she could walk, let alone "hunt."

"You'll get used to it," said Bella bracingly. "Come on."

Anna came, not because she was at all convinced that this was a good idea, but because the whole thing was so ridiculous that she had to see it through. It was like watching two brooms collide at full speed in midair; it was awful, but you couldn't look away.

Cissa, Sirius, and Regulus were waiting for Bella and Anna at the back door. Cissa's dress was much the same as her sisters'. Sirius and Regulus, though, had gotten the worst of the deal. Their legs were covered with tight, clinging material; their upper bodies were swathed in puffy fabric embellished with all manner of ornaments.

Anna laughed.

Sirius looked mutinous. "I am _not_ wearing this," he informed Bella. "I'd rather go starkers than wear this." He attempted to make good on his threat, but he was no more able to manipulate the strange clothing than Anna.

Bella stared down at Sirius imperiously. "We can't look like wizards if we get caught. Do you want to be sent to Azkaban?"

"Why don't we just not get caught?" asked Sirius, still tugging at the strange clothing that covered his legs.

"There has to be a contingency plan."

"What's contingency?" Sirius was the only one from whom Bella would have tolerated so many questions, or, indeed, any questions.

"Just in case."

"I don't think—"

"Thinking isn't your job," said Bella sharply, and she prodded Sirius to his feet. Regulus and Narcissa stood without being beckoned. "Forward, hunters!" she cried.

Anna wasn't surprised when they all trooped to the edge of the Black property. The Blacks' land was separated from the Rosiers' only by a stream. Anna's mother had been born a Rosier, but the relationship between the families was currently strained. Old Mrs. Rosier had made it plain that she did not want the Black children trampling her flowers or tormenting the aged hippogriff who lived in a shed behind her house.

This made it all the more tempting for Bella and Sirius to cross the stream and explore the Rosiers' property every chance they got.

Bella came to an abrupt halt on the bank of the stream. "A raging river!" she exclaimed in her most melodramatic voice. "Mightier than the Thames! How will we ever get across?"

"The bridge?" asked Regulus, pointing upstream. Regulus was five and didn't yet understand theatrics for the sake of theatrics. Sirius trod on his brother's foot and shook his head.

"There is no bridge!" Bella shouted with so much certainly that Anna surreptitiously glanced sideways to make sure the bridge still existed. It did.

"We could build one," suggested Cissa, who was looking openly at the bridge Bella had declared non-existent, evidently in the hopes that Bella would re-allow the bridge if she were allowed to take credit for it.

"I'll bet _you_ could make a bridge just by wishing for it," Anna said obsequiously, building on her younger sister's foundation. "You're _so_ magic."

They all did magic inadvertently from time to time when they were startled or angry. Bella, though, had been working to harness her powers ever since she'd become aware of them. She couldn't do much without a wand, but she took immense pride in her small triumphs.

Bella shook her head sadly. "There's no time. We'll have to…. Jump!"

It had rained a good deal over the past few days, and while the stream perhaps didn't compare to the Thames except in Bella's mind, it still looked deeper and wider than Anna had ever seen it before. Bella might jump it if she were lucky; Anna herself might, too, if she could control her ridiculous costume. But Cissa and the boys had no chance of making the leap successfully. Their legs were too short.

"We'll be soaked!" protested Cissa.

"Is that what you want to tell Mum and Dad when the whole countryside has been ravaged by rampaging beasts? We didn't find them and kill them because we were afraid to get wet?"

Cissa had noticed her reflection in a still pool of water beside the stream, and was gazing at it with unabashed fascination. She seemed to have forgotten her argument with Bella.

"I'LL GO FIRST!" cried Bella loudly, concerned that she was losing her grip on her audience. Without even taking a running start or adjusting her ridiculous clothing, she leapt from one bank to the other. Her legs barely moved; her arms were strangely stiff. Anna wondered if Bella had managed to nick and use a wand.

From the opposite bank, Bella pointed at Anna. "You first!"

Anna took stock of her options and thought them through, as her tutors always told her to do in the green and silver school room at her aunt's house.

She could refuse to cross, or use the bridge, but that would send Bella screaming for revenge. Arguing with Bella was a bore.

She could wade across and be soaking wet for the rest of the day as Bella led them through who-knew-what.

She could jump, and would most certainly fall on her face when she tripped over her gown.

She nodded to herself and resolutely backed away from the stream. Then she hiked the gown up around her waist and took a running start. She closed her eyes as she pushed off of the near bank and stumbled as she landed next to Bella, who was laughing hysterically.

"Not ladylike," roared Bella in a fair imitation of one of their tutors. "But impressive all the same. Well done, Anna." Regulus and Sirius applauded from their side of the stream.

Cissa took advantage of Bella's distraction to run to the bridge, scramble across it, and sprint to Bella's side. Bella looked languidly at Cissa from beneath exotic, heavily lidded eyes. "Cheating."

"I jumped," said Cissa, all earnestness. "You didn't notice because you were looking at Anna."

Bella laughed again. "Good enough." She turned her attention to the two small boys still on the Black side. "Now you, my Sirius."

With a hard, determined look on his baby-round face, Sirius attempted the jump. He didn't do badly for being so small. The force of his leap carried him across the deepest, swiftest part of the water before he fell to his knees among the rocks that would have formed the stream's bank had the water not been quite so high.

He gritted his teeth and pulled himself upright, making an obvious but successful effort not to favor his newly bruised ankle.

"Regulus," directed Bella.

Regulus was even smaller than Sirius (there was much gushing amongst their grown family members that Sirius would one day be unusually tall, as befit a Black heir). Regulus obeyed Bella's command, and an instant later tumbled into the middle of the stream. He lost his balance and his head dipped under the water, but the others still heard his shout of fear.

Anna was ready to admit that enough was enough and wade into the water to retrieve Regulus, but before she could move, Sirius darted past her. Back straight (posture was also discussed in their daily tutoring sessions), eyes fixed on his goal, he marched into the water and grabbed the now-sobbing Regulus by the hand.

The brothers struggled out of the stream together, Regulus teary and Sirius defiant. Bella jerked her right arm up and down, and Regulus' clothes miraculously dried. Anna's earlier speculation that her sister had stolen a wand and had it concealed in her sleeve was confirmed.

Regulus' tears stopped when he found himself unexpectedly warm and dry. He looked at Bella in wonder.

Sirius glared at Bella, who did not seem inclined to do anything more. "What about me?"

"What about you?"

"Dry me off, too!"

"You walked in! It's entirely your fault that you're wet."

Sirius pointed accusingly at Regulus. "He was drowning!"

"Was not," muttered Regulus unconvincingly.

"Even if that were true," said Bella with an air of finality, "sometimes when you're on a quest, you have to leave people behind."

"He's my brother!"

Bella was unimpressed, and she turned on her heel, striding toward the shed that concealed the decrepit hippogriff. Regulus and Cissa exchanged a look and followed. Sirius followed as well, irritated enough that he forgot to stop himself from limping. Anna brought up the rear, watching the bedraggled procession with morbid fascination.

The first part of the "quest" involved a series of dares to "touch the hippogriff" or "throw a rock at the hippogriff." The beast was blind, deaf, and almost insensate as well as being firmly tethered in place, so these feats weren't quite as foolhardy as they might have been with another animal.

When this pastime inevitably grew boring, Bella vanished and returned with what Anna recognized as a common garden gnome dangling from one hand. It appeared to have been stunned; whether Bella had done that with her concealed wand or by hitting the thing over the head, Anna did not care to speculate.

"This," Bella announced dramatically, "is the source of all the beast's power. We've overpowered its guardian," she gestured to the sleeping hippogriff, "and now all we have to do is finish the job!"

She prodded the gnome awake. It squealed angrily; with a nervous glance at the house, Bella ripped a swatch of fabric from her costume and made a gag for the gnome's mouth. The gnome's eyes widened in terror.

Bella poked the gnome, then let it run just so far from her before grabbing it again. She asked her sisters and cousins to suggest what to do to the gnome next. The gnome was squeezed and tossed about; the gnome's hands and feet were bound. Anna was uncomfortably reminded of her cat capturing a mouse and proceeding to rip off its fur bit by bit rather than going for the kill as soon as it pounced.

Anna stared hard at the gnome. Bella had some control over her magic when she didn't have a wand, and if Bella could do it, Anna could do it. Anna wished the gnome out of the shed and free of its bonds. She tried to channel the gnome's fear and make it her own. It didn't work.

If only old Mrs. Rosier would come to check on the hippogriff! That would send Bella scrambling for their own house, gnomes forgotten.

That was it.

When she was very sure that Cissa, Regulus, Sirius, and Bella were all entranced by the gnomes latest desperate gyrations, Anna slid one hand deep into the hippogriff's feathers and twisted with all her might.

The hippogriff gave an odd, outraged roar and scrambled to its ill-assorted, arthritic feet. Anna jumped away unnoticed by the others, who had all jumped themselves.

"Run or hide?" whispered Sirius.

"Run," Bella decreed. "Run."

They ran, and didn't stop until all five were sealed in Cissa's bedroom (nearest the back door), laughing with the exhilaration of it all.

Bella and Anna had never been the dearest of confidants. Each had chosen her own way from birth; they were as different in personality as they were alike in appearance. Still, that day marked the first time that Anna felt not only different from Bella, but afraid of her.

When Bella went off to Hogwarts less than a year later, Sirius took over as the one who ruled the schoolroom and the one who made cheeky comments at dinner and got away with it. Anna grew quieter than ever; while self-preservation necessitated keeping a close eye on Bella's performances, Sirius's antics were merely silly. Anna could lose track of her surroundings without worrying that she would be pulled into something dangerous.

Anna's parents bought her an owl to "ease her grief" at having her sister so far away. Anna didn't tell them that all she felt was relief.

X

In the present, Andromeda allowed Katie to conjure a stretcher and help float Nymphadora's body to a waiting carriage while the auror she had fetched promised that Andromeda would be contacted as soon as Remus's body was recovered.

She didn't bid Harry farewell. Slipping away from someone who had the tiniest claim on the last being in the world Andromeda loved was just as much as relief now as being rid of Bellatrix had been thirty-odd years before.

_**TBC.**_

* * *

_**Note on Ages**__: J.K. Rowling has created a universe and characters that millions of people love, worship, and adore. However, her math is, shall we say, scary. Therefore, I haven't matched the ages of the Black cousins to the dates on the published Black Family Tree, despite my efforts to stay canon-compatible with the rest of this fic. _

_I also find it almost impossible to mimic Rowling's style while writing Andromeda's point of view instead of Harry's, so I haven't tried. Next chapter is back to Harry's point of view and back to me making a conscious attempt to imitate canon writing patterns._

_Finally, parts of the flashback were posted in a slightly altered form several years ago as part of a fic which was never finished. _


	3. Present Goodbye

**The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf**

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

Harry spent most of the first several days after the Battle of Hogwarts eating and sleeping. He did both somewhat surreptitiously; while Mrs. Weasley was, as usual, placing piles of delicious food in front of him at every opportunity, none of the Weasleys seemed to have much appetite. It seemed disrespectful that, despite recent events, Harry couldn't get enough. Bill, Charlie, and Percy also devoured what was placed before them, with Percy in particular claiming that it had been too long since he'd tasted Mrs. Weasley's cooking, but Harry knew that they were just humoring their mother.

Charlie and Percy were currently staying in Ron's attic bedroom with Ron and Harry (the ghoul had been returned to the attic proper with minimal protest). Bill and Fleur had taken over Percy's old bedroom because Mrs. Weasley had said she couldn't stand for Bill to be even as far away as Shell Cottage. George rarely emerged from the bedroom he had shared with Fred for most of their lives.

Ginny, too, kept her tiny room to herself, and the evening before Fred's funeral, Harry found himself pulled inside. His heart hammered in his chest. It had been almost a year since the last time she had done this, almost a year since she had kissed him. They hadn't ever discussed it; her brother was dead, and that was all that mattered. Still, if Ginny kissed him again, Harry knew he wouldn't be able to resist kissing her back, tangling his fingers in her long hair, pushing his body closer to hers—

"I need help with this," declared Ginny, slamming the door shut behind them and shoving a foul-smelling cauldron under Harry's nose. Evidently, _she_ wasn't thinking about snogging, as Harry shouldn't have been.

"What's that supposed to be?" Harry asked, wrinkling his nose involuntarily.

"Just get rid of it." She pulled Harry's wand from his pocket and placed it in his hand. Harry pretended that her touch didn't send an odd swooping sensation through his body even under these circumstances.

Harry waved his wand. "Evanesco." The potion vanished.

"Thank you." Ginny turned away to rummage under her bed. She continued muttering, though whether to herself or Harry, Harry could not discern. "You'd think they'd let go of the restrictions on underage wizardry, for heaven's sake I got nine OWLS, I was there fighting the Death Eaters when all those fully-qualified wizards were hiding under their beds, but no, just because I'm not seventeen until August—"

She withdrew what Harry recognized as a collection of standard potions ingredients from their hiding place and flung them onto her bed next to a large supply of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes' Wild-Fire Whiz-Bangs and a smaller collection of folded paper cranes.

"What were you trying to brew?" Harry asked again, hoping he sounded harmless and gentle.

"Bubbling potion," Ginny spat.

Bubbling potion was one of the first potions first year students at Hogwarts learned to brew, and it was remarkably simple once you'd reached NEWT level, but Harry decided that now was not a good time to make this observation. He glanced back at the now-empty cauldron, which was sitting on Ginny's dresser. There was no sign that she had lit a fire under it recently. Harry realized, belatedly, that the cauldron could not have been hot, or Ginny would not have been able to pick it up as she had.

"You can't brew a bubbling potion without a fire," he observed carefully.

Ginny sneered. "Sluggy really doesn't know what he's talking about when he goes on about what a great potion-brewer you are, does he?"

"No," said Harry honestly. "I'm actually rubbish at potions, just ask Snape." He froze, having forgotten for an instant that not only was Snape dead, but he had been Harry's mother's childhood best friend and had died after doing more than almost anyone else to bring about Voldemort's downfall.

Ginny took pity on Harry in the awkward silence that followed. "You can brew some potions without heat, but you have to adjust the ingredients. Obviously, I didn't do that part properly."

Silently, Harry set up the base for Ginny's cauldron and lit a fire beneath it with his wand. He did a lot of things silently lately. Ron didn't want to talk, but he seemed to prefer that Harry be around even if they weren't doing or saying anything. (Hermione, of course, was in Australia with her parents. From what little she'd said in one brief message, they hadn't taken the revelation that she had tampered with their memories especially well.)

Harry and Ginny methodically measured the ingredients listed in the battered textbook that lay open beside her cauldron. A strand of Ginny's hair slipped too close to the cauldron for comfort, so Harry tucked it back behind her ear. "Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome." He ignored the heady sensation that had accompanied the brush of her hair against his hand.

"And thank you for helping me with this. I thought it would help me if I did it all myself, like the way Mum's barely stopped cooking since we got back."

Harry nodded. "I was going to ask Kreacher if he'd come and help out for a few days, but your Mum seems to need to do it herself."

"Reckon she's been inventing chores for herself," Ginny agreed. "Reckon I was, too, since I didn't just ask you to light this the first time I tried. Or the second." She reached for a phial of colorful red-orange liquid and added it to the potion. "Same color as his hair, just about," she observed.

Harry didn't have to ask whose hair she meant, even though there were six men currently in the Burrow who had flaming red hair. "Just about," he agreed hoarsely.

"I thought of making the bubbles all different colors," she said conversationally. "But when I saw this color, I knew it was the only one to use. You can enchant the cranes so they'll release the bubbles as they fly, can't you?"

"Yes. I mean, I know the charms." Right at that moment, Harry didn't feel confident in his ability to light his wand, let alone cast spells for what he now realized was going to be a tribute to Fred Weasley.

"Good. I think I have enough fireworks. You'll help me set them off when the ceremony is over?"

Harry gulped. "Have you run this by your Mum?"

"I don't really care if she doesn't approve," said Ginny so firmly that Harry decided not to pursue that line of questioning, now or ever.

"Should we at least get rid of the ones that spell 'poo?'" Harry tried.

"Those were his favorites!" Ginny exclaimed, her eyes suddenly overbright. "You did _meet_ my brother Fred, right?"

"Yes," said Harry unnecessarily, trying to force his every memory of Fred from his mind,

even as they all clamored to the surface. He remembered the first time he'd spoken to Fred, as the twins had helped him put his trunk on the Hogwarts Express before his very first journey to Hogwarts. They hadn't known that he was famous, nor even his name; he and Ron weren't yet close as brothers themselves. Fred and George had seen a lonely, helpless first year and offered aid merely because they thought it right. Harry couldn't reconcile the vision of the vibrant thirteen-year-old with the lifeless body he knew lay in a coffin at a church near Diagon Alley. Now Harry's eyes were a bit too bright, too.

"You see," said Ginny, clearly knowing that Harry did see, "I can't let Fred get put down there next to Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon, all quiet and cold and… solemn. That's not Fred. That wasn't Fred."

"No," Harry agreed, using all of his willpower to keep his voice from cracking. He was in full agreement with Ginny. "That wasn't Fred at all."

Ginny flung herself into Harry's arms, and Harry held onto her gratefully. She still wasn't truly crying—she rarely did—but neither did this embrace hold a hint of anything other than common despair.

Unfortunately, that was the moment that Ron threw the door open without knocking.

"What do you think you're doing with my sister?" he demanded. He wasn't yelling, yet, but Harry still winced at the sudden noise in the mausoleum-like Burrow.

"What makes you think it's any of your business?" shrieked Ginny.

"It's my business if my mate is using my brother's funeral as an excuse to jerk my little sister around!" Ron thundered.

With a strangled, furious cry, Ginny made toward Ron with the clear intention of doing him bodily harm. Harry's wand flew into his hand as if of its own volition, and he raised a shield charm between Ron and Ginny just in time.

"PUT THAT DOWN!" they bellowed in remarkable unison.

"It wasn't like that," Harry told Ron in as level a voice as he could manage.

"Don't explain to him!" protested Ginny.

Another door opened and there were footsteps on the stairs. "What's going on?" asked George in a way that implied that he didn't actually care, but was going through the motions of asking automatically.

"Nothing. Sorry, George," said Ron and Ginny, again speaking in perfect unison.

Harry dropped the shield charm and followed Ron back to the attic.

They were all very quiet for the rest of the night.

X

The day of Fred Weasley's funeral dawned mockingly, brilliantly sunny. They used Floo powder to get to the church even though everyone knew how to Apparate; overwhelming grief made the spell trickier than it already was.

(Harry was forced to remember Fred's reaction upon learning that Harry's first use of Floo powder had gone very, very wrong and landed him in Knockturn Alley—_"Excellent!"_)

Harry didn't hear much of the ceremony. Charlie gave his brother's eulogy. It was blissfully short, and Harry sensed a few suggestions of polite laughter from elsewhere in the church, but Harry found it hard to pay much attention. His mind skipped ahead to the release of fireworks at the burial. Nothing could go wrong; Fred and George had designed their products to be foolproof. But after a year of constant planning for the next disaster interspersed with battles for his life, Harry found it difficult to perform the simplest tasks without wondering how he and his friends might be killed in the process.

As it happened, the few watery smiles that were provoked by Harry and Ginny's release of the fireworks, paper cranes, and bubbles as dirt was shoveled onto Fred's coffin reassured him that they had made the right decision. Even Hermione, who had arrived at the church just moments before the ceremony began, gave Harry the tiniest approving nod. She managed to pull him aside soon after the burial, as the Weasleys still stood by the newly erected headstone bearing Fred's name and two dates just over twenty years apart.

"How're they doing?" she asked without preamble.

Harry nodded at the family. "You can see." Hermione sighed. "How was Australia?"

"My parents are furious. They think I should have given them a choice about whether I was going to modify their memories when I sent them into hiding. They didn't _understand_—" she broke off, staring at Ron, who had his arm around Ginny and was obviously crying.

"They didn't understand?" Harry prompted. He thought he would much rather hear about Hermione's still-intact family than continue to think about the devastation that had just been visited on the family that he loved better than any other in the world.

"It's doesn't matter," said Hermione woodenly. "But I've promised to go back in a few hours. They didn't want me leaving at all, but I couldn't not be here. I'm going to have to miss Collin's this afternoon, though, I'm sorry."

"I can do it alone."

"Do what alone?" Ron and Ginny had wandered over, brushing off the condolences of Fred's former teachers, classmates, Quidditch teammates, and customers. Through his red eyes, Ron was watching Harry suspiciously, as if he thought Harry might be planning some dangerous new adventure.

"Collin Creevey's funeral," Harry told him, largely because he couldn't think of a good lie fast enough. It was a strange sensation that he hoped never to have again, this feeling that he was cheating on Fred by going to another funeral on the same day Fred was buried.

"Oh. I didn't know. Mum'd go spare if I took off, though," said Ron, as if anyone had suggested that he even consider attending.

"I'll go," piped up Ginny a little too eagerly. Harry wondered if perhaps the idea appealed to her only because Ron had suggested that it would upset Mrs. Weasley. Ginny seemed to sense Harry's thought, because she elaborated, not a little defensively. "He was _my_ House, _my_ year, we sat next to each other in half of our classes. I want to be there for him."

No one argued further, which Harry suspected might have disappointed Ginny.

X

A few hours later, he Apparated them to a discreet location near a Muggle funeral home. Once there, they saw a few more of Collin's Hogwarts classmates, and, looking very odd in Muggle clothing, Professor McGonagall. Collin's casket was open at the front of the hall, and Harry noticed that someone had placed a camera in his hard, lifeless hands.

The gathering was small; Collin's parents were Muggles and couldn't very well explain to their friends and neighbors that their son had died a hero in the last standoff between Light and Dark magic. It wasn't until Harry and Ginny were ready to return to the Burrow that a problem arose.

Harry and Ginny approached Collin's younger brother, Dennis, to tell him goodbye and offer their sympathies. Dennis, like Collin, had always been sweet-natured in the past. Today, though, his face was contorted with grief and fury. He glared at Harry.

"My brother wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for you," Dennis said in harsh, accusing voice that did not sound as if it belonged to him. "He would've followed you anywhere. Then you had your stupid DA meetings and you taught him just enough that he thought he could help, but he only got murdered!"

In the last few days, Harry had begun to fancy that he was becoming quite adept at calming and comforting the bereaved. It seemed that he had spoken to half the wizards in Britain in the hour after Voldemort's final defeat. But those he had spoken to on that day had all been convinced that their loved ones had died fighting for something bigger and better than their own lives. No one had blamed Harry; they had all been determined to thank him though their tears.

Dennis' fury left Harry temporarily speechless. Beside him, Ginny stiffened, ready to come to Harry's defense. Before Ginny could open her mouth, Harry grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. She relaxed, but only slightly.

"I know it's the worst feeling in the world," she told Dennis. "My brother died, too."

Dennis stared at her, unmoved. "You have loads of brothers. I only had the one."

Ginny's wand was out in the blink of an eye. Harry had recovered from his initial surprise and was fast enough to place a silencing charm and a weakening hex on Ginny before she performed obvious magic in front of Collin's Muggle friends and relatives.

He was bothered that it occurred to him the Imperius Curse would have made much shorter work of his task as he dragged Ginny outside and Apparated them back to the Burrow.

Harry removed the charms from Ginny as soon as the Apparition was complete. Ginny's brown eyes flashed menacingly at Harry and her hair blazed redder than usual under the bright sun. "How dare you?" she began. "After what he said about Fred, how _dare_ you?"

"You couldn't just hex him in front of all of those Mug—"

"_Don't_ talk to me about that! He was talking about Fred like he's just expendable, like we had a spare so it's all fine, and you _let_ him because nothing's more important than you being the Chosen One everyone loves!"

Harry's retort died in his throat when he saw Mrs. Weasley hurrying toward them. He didn't know whether Mrs. Weasley would agree that Harry had had to stop Ginny or whether she would think that he should have hexed Dennis himself. Deciding that either reaction would be equally frightening, and not wanting to argue with the Weasleys or watch them argue with each other on today of all days, he hissed at Ginny "Tell your Mum I had to go check on the Dursleys," and Disapparated again.

X

After shaking off the familiar sensation of being forced through a tube that was too small for him, Harry found that he had appeared near the Ministry of Magic. He thought vaguely of crossing into the Muggle realm and finding somewhere to hide until Ginny had calmed down, but quickly determined that he didn't want to explain where he'd been if he hadn't looked into the Dursleys' situation.

Now that he thought of it, he wasn't even sure that the Dursleys were alive. He had meant to ask Kingsley or one of the other Order members many times, but the question had always been driven from his head by the grief and chaos that surrounded him almost constantly.

Harry obtained his visitor's badge with no trouble, but found himself unable to move through the crowded corridors of the Ministry without what seemed like throngs of people shaking his hands, patting his back, and offering him their thanks. It wasn't as uncomfortable as Dennis Creevey's accusations, but somehow Harry felt that it was less honest. _He_ hadn't chosen to be the one to defeat Voldemort, after all; Voldemort had done that for him. _He_ hadn't chosen to have his mother, his father, and their friends line up to die before him so he would have the chance continue on; they had made their own decisions.

Before he could follow that train of thought any further, he blurted out that he needed to see about his Muggle relatives who had been taken into hiding a year before. Everyone was, of course, more than willing to help him; their eagerness reminded him of the house-elves who worked in the Hogwarts kitchen. Far more witches and wizards than could possibly have been necessary escorted him to Hit Wizard Headquarters, which was apparently handling such things.

"Minister Shacklebolt left special orders about this," a dark-eyed witch told him. "Everything that used to be Order of the Phoenix business. We hadn't gotten to them yet with all the chaos, since they're safe where they are. It's lucky you came in when you did, I was just coming off a 30-hour shift, but I can take you myself."

"You don't have to—" Harry began, intending to assure her that he agreed that everyone in the Ministry were far more important (and pleasant) duties than seeing to the Dursleys.

Her face fell so completely that Harry, for a horrified second, thought she might cry. "If you'd prefer someone else, that can be arranged," she said, and several wizards stepped forward eagerly, apparently offering themselves as alternatives.

"I just know that you're working all hours here, and I don't want to add to that. I know how important the work everyone is doing is, and what a great job you're doing." He knew nothing of the kind, but the witch brightened again and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Everyone says you're good as well as great," she told Harry fervently, and he was again uncomfortably reminded of a house-elf. He had thought that hit wizards would have been made of sterner stuff than this, even if they had been working constantly in a bizarre state of emotional upheaval following the death of Voldemort. "Hopkins, Church, you're with me," she called to two wizards. Everyone else in the crowd that had clustered about them looked quite disappointed as the one called Hopkins hurried forward with a quill held flat on the palm of his hand.

"Portkey," Hopkins told Harry in a businesslike, if awe-struck, manner. "Ten seconds."

Harry and the hit wizards landed stumbling for purchase on a steep grassy slope near a row of weathered but cozy-looking homes. The hit wizards set to removing various charms intended to dissuade the use of unfriendly magic; that done, they set off toward the houses. "Number fifteen," the one called Church announced.

Harry searched automatically for the house labeled number fifteen, but once he found it he was sure Church had got it wrong. He had rarely seen a building that looked less Dursleyish. The paint, which must have once been a particularly lurid shade of purple, was faded. The grass needed cutting, and the flower bed was wildly overgrown. There was a postbox near the road that was more than a little crooked; a bicycle leaned haphazardly against it; and a disreputable-looking gray cat was slinking beneath them both.

"Do you like it?" asked the lead witch. "One of the Order members who helped set it up seemed to believe it was essential that the place not look too neat, and have a bit of character. Nymphadora Tonks, her name was—one of the aurors killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. She had Muggle grandparents and knew a bit about it—and was a genius at concealment and such to start with."

Harry nodded thickly. He hadn't needed to be reminded that Tonks was dead, nor did he need to be told that she'd thought the Dursleys needed a bit less neatness in their lives for reasons that had nothing to do with their safety. He had come upon one of Tonks' jokes after her death, and he hadn't the energy to laugh any more than he had been able to laugh at Charlie's recollections of Fred that morning—had it only been earlier that day that they'd buried Fred?

The front door of number fifteen swung open, and a young man walked purposefully toward them. The man had clasped Harry's hand and said "you're all right, then?" before he realized who he was.

"Dudley?"

Dudley laughed, a bit nervously. "No one's called me that for almost a year. Those wizards really put the fear of saying it into Mum and Dad. Is it true that you can put a magical trace on a word so that when someone says it, you'll be able to swoop down and grab them?"

"That's true," said Harry, forcing down a rather unpleasant memory. He, Dudley, and the hit wizards began to walk toward the house. "They did that a few months ago, not with your name, but with his. Voldemort's."

"The one who killed your parents?" said Dudley with a remarkable attempt at apology in his voice, considering that he had tormented Harry about his dead parents at least twice a day for the decade that they'd lived together year round.

"That's him. But he's gone now. Everything's safe."

Dudley looked ready to ask another question—which was almost as un-Dudleyish as the house was un-Dursleyish—but they had reached the door and let themselves inside.

"Mum? Dad?" Dudley called.

"Sweetums?" came Aunt Petunia's voice, and there was a thunderous noise that must have been Uncle Vernon coming down a flight of stairs. All at once Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were atop them, Aunt Petunia just as bony and horse-faced as ever, Uncle Vernon looking just as much like a walrus. Harry wondered if the members of the Order who had hidden them had decided not to alter their appearances, or if Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were simply so purely Muggle that magic couldn't work on them.

"So you're still alive, then," said Uncle Vernon when he saw Harry.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Harry said, feeling strangely comforted that some things, like Uncle Vernon's enormous hatred of him, never changed. Perhaps he would go round the Dursleys' home once a year for the rest of his life, just to remind himself that nothing was as bad as living with them and to get himself a bit of grounding abuse.

Perhaps not.

"You've always been a problem," Uncle Vernon was growling. "Why change now? I've regretted since the day I allowed you to darken my home—our beautiful, normal home back on Privet Drive—that I didn't send you after your freak parents—"

Instead of responding, Harry caught Aunt Petunia's eye where she stood cowering behind Uncle Vernon's noisy bulk. "The wizard who murdered your sister is dead," he told her quietly. "I thought you'd like to know."

Aunt Petunia looked at Harry without speaking, and Harry felt a surge of meanness where he knew he should have felt pity. "Her best friend from when they were growing up? Severus Snape, you remember him? He's dead, too, died fighting Voldemort, so maybe that will please you, you never liked him." Harry decided not to add that he hadn't liked Snape, either.

Still, Aunt Petunia did not speak. Uncle Vernon, finally becoming aware that Harry was paying his blustering no mind, looked at his wife. "Petunia?" he asked. He gave her a small shake, but she seemed not to notice. He rounded once more on Harry. "BOY! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR AUNT?"

The hit wizards stepped closer to Harry. Dudley's beady eyes darted from the wizards to Harry to his parents. Just when Harry was ready to duck the blow he was sure would come, Aunt Petunia put her hand on Uncle Vernon's arm. "It's nothing," she said, as if every word was causing her extreme pain. "Let's listen to what they've come to tell us."

"Right," said the lead hit wizard. "It will take us a few minutes to get everything set to bring you back to your old life. Perhaps Mr. Potter and his cousin can have a walk while we help you out here?"

Dudley, who had never liked to be in the company of multiple wizards, but couldn't bring himself to be particularly frightened of Harry, seized the opportunity. "Come on, Harry." Harry agreed, not wanting to make the hit wizards' job harder by antagonizing his relatives with his mere presence.

They walked back down the steep hill. "So, er," said Harry, thinking he should say something but never having been in the habit of making polite conversation with Dudley, "how have things been here?"

"Odd," said Dudley. "Living in a different place, having a different name, not going to Smeltings for my last year. And my girlfriend is pregnant."

"_What_?" Harry stopped dead. Just before the Dursleys had gone into hiding, Dudley had managed to shock Harry by thanking him for protecting him from a Dementor (Well, in truth, he'd just said that he didn't think Harry useless, but Harry had known what he meant.) That shock had nothing on this one.

"It wasn't her fault."

Harry hadn't been about to imply that it was.

"Mum and Dad say it is. They keep blaming her, saying she got herself pregnant to trick me, and they wanted me to stop seeing her and make her give the baby up when it's born."

That, at least, was the reaction Harry would have expected from his aunt and uncle.

"Say something."

"When's she going to have the baby?" Harry managed.

"Next month or so. And I'm going to help her, no matter what Mum and Dad say. It's my responsibility, too."

Harry's fingers tightened on the wand hidden up his sleeve. This couldn't be Dudley. Dudley had obviously been murdered by Death Eaters looking to use him to get to Harry, and this was a none-too-accurate imposter.

He drew the wand and pointed it at Dudley, who jumped back frantically. _That_ seemed more like the Dudley Harry knew, but he still wasn't accepting this. "Don't move!" Harry commanded. "If you really are my cousin, I won't hurt you."

"How—how am I supposed to prove—what makes you think—you came here!"

"What happened on your eleventh birthday?"

"We went to the zoo, and the boa constrictor got out, and Dad locked you under the stairs for punishment!"

Harry paused, but didn't put his wand down. "Anyone could have heard that story, it's common knowledge that I'm a parselmouth."

"What's a pars—"

Harry didn't know whether he or Dudley was more frantic. "Once, when we were about eight, the school headmistress went spare and told your parents I was climbing buildings. Why?"

"I don't know! I mean, I remember we chased you behind the kitchens, but I didn't know how you ended up on the chimney like that! I don't think you knew, either, you kept saying you didn't! I'm sorry, all right, we were idiots!"

Harry's heart was pounding in his throat, which he didn't think was a very good place for his heart to be. He lowered his wand slowly; this _was_ Dudley after all. No one else could have known what had happened so many years ago, when Harry had been the favorite target of bullies instead of the so-called Chosen One.

He had not been attempting to wheedle an apology from Dudley, and now that he had one he had no idea how to acknowledge it. "I just had to make sure you weren't an imposter," he told Dudley grudgingly. "That was one of Voldemort's specialties. I test my friends like that, too."

Dudley had grown a few inches since Harry had seen him last, and had added more muscle, too. His way of walking had changed; he strode more than he shuffled. But he was still pale and trembling and eyeing Harry's wand with unconcealed terror. Harry slipped the wand back up his sleeve; it was lucky he was still wearing the long-sleeved Muggle shirt he had put on for Collin's funeral.

Dudley didn't seem to relax. "Congratulations," Harry told him, because he was sure no one else had, and someone should. He had never imagined congratulating Dudley on managing to reproduce. He had always thought that adding more Dursleys to the world would be a bad thing, not a good one, and had always reassured himself that Dudley wasn't intelligent enough to figure out how to have children even if a woman existed who was willing to have them with him.

"What?" asked Dudley weakly.

"A baby. Congratulations."

"Oh. Thanks."

"I have a godson who's about a month old," Harry confessed. "But I've only seen him once, and then I didn't even hold him."

"One of your friends had a baby?" Dudley looked a little less shaky now.

Harry shook his head. "My Dad's friend." Something froze inside him as he said it. He and Remus had been getting to have a relationship that went beyond professor-student themselves, but now Remus was dead. "He died in the last battle, though, and so did his wife. Teddy ended up a Voldemort orphan, just like me. Except I'm not locked up in prison like _my_ godfather was."

"So you're going to know Teddy, right? Like I'm going to know my baby, no matter what anyone says."

Harry stared at his cousin. "That dementor really did blow a new personality into you three years ago," he said. "Because you make sense now, Big D."

No matter what Andromeda Tonks thought, Harry was going to be a part of Teddy's life. In fact, if Mrs. Tonks had any kind of a problem with Harry, he would just spirit Teddy away the way he had a million times wished Sirius could have done for him. Teddy wasn't prophesized to defeat a Dark Lord; Teddy didn't have to spend ten years getting shoved under a cupboard. Teddy couldn't end up like Neville, waiting seventeen years for his grandmother to value him the way she'd valued the child she'd lost.

As soon as the Dursleys were re-situated, Harry was going to go straight to Mrs. Tonks' house to claim Teddy.

* * *

_**To be continued.**__ Thank you for the reviews. As for reviewer speculation, let's just say one of you has something right._

_Next chapter: Back to Andromeda's musings._


	4. Past Hello

**The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf**

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

Andromeda caressed her grandson's hair, which was currently lime green. Teddy seemed to lean toward cooler colors: blues and greens and dark purples and even black. Nymphadora, by contrast, had usually chosen fiery pinks and reds

"Which shall we answer first?" she asked Teddy, who showed no interest in the stack of parchment and quills before them. Andromeda didn't blame him. She wasn't especially fond of this chore, either.

"This one is from your godfather," she told the baby as she wrote a reply on a square of parchment and sent it off with an owl. "He wants to come visit you. I suppose we'll have to let him, although I don't really want to share you."

Teddy cooed, and Andromeda chose to believe that it was in response to the compliment.

"You'll probably like Harry. Your mother did." There was a familiar tightening in her throat. "Your father thought the sun rose and set on him. There weren't enough superlatives in the world for Remus to say what he thought of Harry, and Remus was usually the practical one."

She grimaced at the thought of Remus. His body had not yet been recovered, and while the dead were understandably of a lower priority than the living, she was beginning to feel progressively more on edge. There was no good reason to steal a corpse.

Andromeda had decided to bury Nymphadora next to Ted without waiting for Remus' body to be found. The tombstone bore Remus' name as well as Nymphadora's; perhaps she would have a proper memorial service after the tombstone was rendered accurate. She appreciated that both Nymphadora and Remus had been popular, Remus much more so than he knew, and that aurors and friends and former students would want to pay their respects. However, her well-known reputation as the next thing to a recluse had encouraged those who had inquired to step back when she had not allowed for a public funeral and burial. Going through the whole ceremony would have seemed so… Black. And Black was what she'd given up when she'd become Ted's wife and Nymphadora's mother.

She and Teddy hadn't quite completed their correspondence when one of the protective charms Nymphadora and her friends had long ago placed on the house warned her that someone was approaching.

"That didn't take him long," she told Teddy.

She opened the door for Harry with one hand as the other held Teddy firmly in place against her body.

Harry flinched. Harry couldn't look at her without flinching or glaring, it seemed, but when he spoke, he was polite. "Thank you for allowing me to come, Mrs. Tonks," he said.

"Remus and Nymphadora wanted you to be Teddy's godfather," she replied smoothly, reminding Harry that nothing had been formalized. She wasn't about to ignore her daughter's wishes; Nymphadora's "marriage" hadn't been legal, either, but that didn't mean that Andromeda went around claiming that Remus hadn't been her husband. But why give a wildly powerful boy who obviously disliked her an edge that he didn't need?

"May I hold him?" he asked, and Andromeda was tempted to smile. Harry was capable of learning, at least.

"Have you ever held a baby before?" she asked, trying not to sound too unkind.

"No." There was the tiniest hint of defiance. "But I'll do it however you say."

"Sit," she commanded, pointing at the chair she had occupied a few moments before. "He's starting to hold his head up for himself in some positions, but not for long, so you really have to support it for him."

"Is that, er, normal?"

"Babies aren't born with the muscles in their necks fully developed." Ted hadn't known that, either, when Nymphadora was born. Andromeda, of course, had been taught to hold her younger sister and cousins when she had been little more than a baby herself. "Put his head in the crook of your arm and wrap your other arm around him. Like that." She demonstrated and then transferred Teddy to Harry. Teddy gurgled and changed his hair to the brightest of blues. "He's showing off for you. He must like you."

"Well, I'm impressed," Harry told Teddy. "When we started human transfiguration at Hogwarts, I turned one eyebrow yellow and couldn't turn it back. I had to get my friend Hermione to put it right."

"Are you going to go back to Hogwarts?" Andromeda asked. "I understand that you dropped out to save the world."

Harry's green eyes widened behind his glasses as if he hadn't even considered the subject. "I don't know. It would be strange to go back after a year away."

"What are your plans if you don't go back?"

The boy who had defeated the most powerful dark wizard in recent memory squirmed in his seat. Teddy, discomforted, waved an arm and upset some of the messages that remained on the table. "I don't know. I never thought about what would happen after Voldemort was gone." He watched as Teddy attempted to pat the parchment with minimal success.

Andromeda realized what Harry was about to see an instant before Harry saw it, but an instant was not enough time to interfere.

"You aren't having a funeral for Remus and Tonks? You buried her without him?"

She didn't know Harry well enough to know whether there was an accusation implied in the statement, but she did know that she wasn't going to let the conversation continue.

"It's time for Teddy's nap," she told Harry, even though it wasn't. Swiftly, she shifted Teddy from Harry's arms to her own. "I know he's enjoyed meeting you, but—"

Harry showed himself to the door, casting an observant, appraising glance around as he went. "Thank you for letting me come."

This time, Andromeda _knew_ that an "I'll be back" was implied. She had seen a flash of the brilliant wizard Harry must have been.

When Harry was gone, just for form's sake, she placed Teddy in the crib that had once been Nymphadora's in the bedroom that had once been Nymphadora's. A Hogwarts blanket was draped over the side of the crib. The symbols of all four houses were represented; after all, besides his Gryffindor father and Hufflepuff mother, Teddy had had Ravenclaw grandparents on his father's side. Finally, there was his disreputable Slytherin grandmother.

Slytherin House had had quite the reputation thirty years before, and Andromeda knew well that it had gotten exponentially worse with the passage time. No one expected Teddy to be Sorted into Slytherin; by the time he reached Hogwarts, she doubted that many would remember that his grandmother had once been a Black. They would know that his parents had been a metamorphmagus and a werewolf cut down at the Battle of Hogwarts and expect to see him in one of their old houses.

She wondered if some day, eleven years in the future, Teddy would come home for the Christmas holidays ready to hex Slytherin's snake off the blanket. She wondered if he would be horrified to learn that he was a direct descendant of one of the most notoriously Slytherin families in Hogwarts history, even if he was two generations removed from bearing the name.

As she remembered her own first holiday from school, she considered that perhaps Teddy wouldn't even reach the age of eleven before he began to revile Slytherin House.

X

"Move over, Anna." Anna irritably slid to one side of her bed even before she'd blinked herself properly awake. It was her first holiday back from Hogwarts, and after less than four months of living in the dormitory she had had trouble falling asleep in the aloneness of her own lavish bedroom. Cissa had unexpectedly chosen to join her only after she'd finally managed to relax.

"Go back to your own room," Anna mumbled, still half-asleep.

"Can't."

"Why?"

"Mum said I have to stay with you. Sirius and Regulus are getting my room." Cissa muttered irritably. "Sirius better not touch my makeup."

"Sirius wears makeup?" Things must have changed more than Anna had thought while she was at school.

Cissa sighed in a long-suffering way. "He likes to put anything liquid in a cauldron to see what potions he can make." Anna could imagine the pout on her sister's face even though she couldn't see it in the dark night. "Don't see why they have to get my room. They should get yours or Bella's, you're only just home for the winter holidays. Don't see why they have to come here at all."

"Why _are_ they here?" asked Anna, sitting up suddenly. "Usually we go there." Her aunt's house at Grimmauld Place had more than enough bedrooms so that none of the cousins had to share when they visited. Sometimes all three sisters ended up sharing one room nonetheless; Grimmauld Place could get frightening in the dark.

Cissa yawned and re-arranged her golden hair on Anna's pillow. "Don't know."

"Are Uncle Orion and Aunt Walburga here, too?"

"Don't think so. I saw their baby house-elf, Kreacher. That was it." Anna slid out of bed and crept to her door. "Mum said not to leave the room until tomorrow morning," Cissa warned. Anna ignored the admonition and opened her door just a crack. It didn't seem to be spelled shut, so she quietly made her way toward Cissa's room.

She gasped in surprise when she saw a wizard she recognized as the healer who had examined her and Bella just before the start of the term. Lying on Cissa's bed were Regulus and Sirius. Regulus was whimpering faintly; Sirius' features were distorted almost beyond recognition. Slowly, she backed toward her room and had almost made it when her mother's sharp "Andromeda!" split the air.

"I wanted a drink," Anna tried lamely. She wasn't always skilled at talking her way out of it when she was caught doing something forbidden. Bella and Cissa were both experts, but Anna more often relied on what she didn't say than what she did.

"Then you can have a drink from the pitcher of water that is in your room, as it always is. You and Narcissa will stay put until tomorrow morning. Is that clear?"

"Yes," said Anna, shame-faced.

"Good." Anna was pushed back into her bedroom. She heard the lock click behind her, and reflexively tried to turn the knob. Her mother had locked them in.

Cissa was sitting bolt upright in the middle of the bed. "Was he playing with my makeup?"

Anna shook her head. "I don't think he's up to playing with anything." Quietly, in case her mother had cast an eavesdropping charm, she told Cissa what she had seen.

"Do you think they were fighting?" asked Cissa, awe-struck.

"I don't think Regulus could do that much damage to Sirius. I don't even think Sirius could do that to Regulus, even if he's done like Bella and started nicking old wands to practice."

"But who would want to hurt them?"

They ran through many theories, each more unlikely than the last. Their discussion lasted well into the early hours of the morning, at which point they heard Anna's door unlock. Instantly, they fell silent and pulled Anna's quilt over themselves.

A dark chuckle that did not belong to either of their parents greeted them. "Well, well, well. Sleeping like good little girls, are we?"

"Bella!" cried Cissa excitedly, and Anna clapped a hand over her mouth to quiet her.

"Do you know what's going on?" Anna asked in as low a voice as she could muster.

Bella closed and re-locked the door. Bella had no qualms about breaking the rules restricting underage wizardry. Their house and Grimmauld Place were both unplottable. No one would know if Bella was constantly using her wand away from school as long as Bella didn't get caught in the act.

Unlike Anna, Bella was _never_ caught in the act.

"Aunt Walburga's gone crackers," Bella announced, her face shining with the sheer delight that only sharing the most vicious gossip could bring.

"More than usual?" Cissa wanted to know. Had the topic of conversation been someone other than Aunt Walburga, Anna might have reprimanded her sister. But Aunt Walburga being the way Aunt Walburga was, Anna had to admit that the question was reasonable.

"_Completely_ unhinged. Move over." This last was addressed to Cissa, who obligingly scooted closer to Anna so Bella could join them under the quilt. Anna felt an unexpected rush of warmth. She sometimes felt disconnected from her younger sister, and often felt wary of her elder sister. But there were moments like these when she felt like the luckiest person in the world to have Cissa and Bella. One thing all three of them had in common was an intense devotion to those they loved, and they loved one another fiercely. How could they not? They were the Black sisters, and as such they were obligated to share with each other all they knew about their cousins' unexpected appearance.

Anna and Cissa looked expectantly at Bella. Bella, deeming her audience sufficiently prepared, began.

"First I have to thank you, Anna, for trying to sneak back there. It gave me enough of a distraction to get into Cissa's room and hear everything."

"Anna didn't _try_ to sneak in, she made it," piped up Cissa loyally. "She got caught coming back."

"I didn't see much," Anna admitted. "Sirius and Regulus looked awful."

Bella chuckled quietly and unpleasantly. "You'd best let Mum keep thinking you didn't see anything. You too, Cissy. None of us can let on that we know anything but that Sirius and Regulus came here last night. Not even to Sirius and Regulus, not even if they ask."

"Wouldn't they already know what happened?" Cissa wondered aloud.

"Dad wiped their memories after the healer fixed them." Anna and Cissa gasped, and Bella looked pleased to have impressed them. "And you'd better believe he'll wipe ours, too, if he or Mum suspects we know."

"Know _what_?" The suspense had become almost unbearable, which surely thrilled Bella.

"Since it's so close to Christmas, the tutors are gone, but Aunt Walburga was planning out the parties and Uncle Orion was off doing whatever he does. The house-elf was in charge of making sure Sirius and Regulus didn't destroy anything."

"That would take more than a house-elf," interrupted Cissa. "You can't keep Sirius from destroying things without chaining him to a wall."

Bella smirked. "Obviously, I have more faith in Sirius than you do. I don't think chaining him to a wall would stop him."

"You sound like you admire him for it."

"I do," said Bella simply. "I appreciate his ability to take initiative. I don't think anyone knows exactly what Sirius and Regulus got up to after they shook off the house-elf. They weren't in a condition to say by the time they got here. They don't seem to have done any lasting damage, but they were filthy by the time Aunt Walburga showed up."

"She noticed a difference?" asked Cissa scornfully.

"Wait until you get to Hogwarts," teased Anna a bit meanly. "Hoards of boys allowed to wash as little as they like and eat whatever they like, however they like. It's disgusting, them and their dungbombs. Thank Merlin our dormitories are separate." Cissa wrinkled her nose, and she and Anna shared a moment of perfectly unified thought_: Boys are gross. _

"They get better when they get older. Some of them," Bella assured before resuming her narrative. "Aunt Walburga sent Sirius and Regulus to wash, and, as you could both rightfully guess, they didn't make a very good job of it. She sent the house-elf—the older one, not the baby—to do it right. When they came down again, Aunt Walburga started screaming that they still weren't clean. So she pulled out her wand and cut off the house-elf's head, right then and there!"

Anna and Cissa gasped again. Their family always cut the heads off of their house-elves when the house-elves got too old to carry tea trays, but the last time that had happened, it had been a ceremonious event, not a spontaneous, punitive one.

"Then," said Bella, not even letting them catch their breath, "she turned on Sirius and Regulus. She was screaming and screaming that they were dirty—_pas toujours pur_—filthy, a disgrace to the House of Black. They think she started out just hitting them, but then she switched back to her wand. By the time Uncle Orion got there, she was using the Cruciatus Curse."

"So if Uncle Orion hadn't turned up…" Anna wondered aloud, a sick feeling taking root in her stomach. Moments before, she would have given anything to know what had happened. Now she wished that Bella hadn't been quite so willing to share what she had learned.

"Uncle Orion didn't just turn up. The younger house-elf—the only one, now—fetched him somehow. I don't know how. I think he even did something to stop Aunt Walburga hurting Sirius and Regulus. When Uncle Orion got there, he told the house-elf to come here with Regulus and Sirius. Then Uncle Orion got the healer for Aunt Walburga, and when he'd fixed her he came here to fix the boys."

"They didn't take them to Saint Mungo's?" asked Anna.

Bella sent her sister a withering glare. "How would they explain that? You can't go into a public place with two little boys who have obviously had Dark magic done on them. People will talk. Don't you know what people say about our family?"

"That we're brilliant and beautiful and better than everyone else," Cissa answered as if she had been told as much every day of her life—which, of course, she had.

"Well, yes," Bella agreed. "But they also say… mental instability runs in the family. They're just jealous, mind, but that's what they say."

"You said yourself that Aunt Walburga went completely unhinged," Anna protested.

"Oh, she's mad as a box of frogs," Bella agreed. "They probably have her tied up somewhere so she can't hurt herself or anyone else. But that doesn't mean we have to let disgusting little mudbloods and dottering old fools talk about us like that."

Bella climbed out from beneath the quilt and shivered in the winter air. "Remember, we don't know any of this or we'll get our memories wiped just like the boys did." She pulled her wand from the sleeve of her nightdress and waved it over herself. She vanished from sight.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Cissa, impressed.

"Disillusionment charm," said Bella's disembodied voice. "Supposed to be at least NEWT-level magic, so I figured it was about time I learned it. I'm already in my second year of school, you know."

X

The next morning, Anna found Bella invisible once more. Or rather, Bella found Anna by grabbing her from behind as Anna emerged from her bedroom. Anna shrieked in surprise and fear; Bella laughed. So, too, did Sirius, who was trailing behind Bella as he had often done before Bella left for school.

Anna just barely stopped herself from asking Sirius how he was doing. Sirius wasn't to know that short hours before he had looked as if he'd been beaten within an inch of his life. The sensation of knowing more about what had happened to Sirius than Sirius did was rather bizarre.

Her goal accomplished, Bella made herself visible again. Neither Anna nor Sirius was able to pretend that this was anything but impressive.

"Teach me that," said Sirius fervently.

Bella nodded, and Sirius followed her to her own room.

Anna next saw them when she was sent to retrieve her sisters and cousins for the mid-day meal. Cissa and Regulus were quickly seated at the table. Regulus looked a bit lifeless, and Cissa was loudly protesting the day's menu.

"Bella? Sirius?" Anna called as she knocked on Bella's bedroom door.

There was no answer, so, nervously, Anna opened the door a crack.

Sirius and Bella were sitting cross-legged on the floor with a box between them. Both held wands in their right hands. They looked up when Anna entered. "Close it," Bella commanded, but she didn't seem particular as to whether Anna was inside or outside when she closed the door.

"Time to eat," Anna told them even as she shut herself inside with them.

"All right, then, one more time."

Shakily, Sirius raised his wand and pointed it at something inside the box. "Crucio," he said.

Apparently, Bella's lesson had progressed from disillusionment charms to something she found far more interesting. She had sounded quite impressed the night before when she'd announced that Aunt Walburga had used this particular curse on her own children.

A few sparks shot from the wand in Sirius's hand—Anna recognized it as the same one Bella had been accustomed to steal before she'd turned eleven and gotten her own—but nothing happened.

Bella threw her hands up in exasperation. "Sirius, I told you, you've got to mean it! You had it last time, you just couldn't sustain it." She looked at Anna. "Want a go?"

"Don't have my wand," said Anna, pleased for the easy excuse.

Bella shrugged boredly. "Of course you don't. Not everyone can be a prodigy like Sirius and me. But you'll understand some day. You're a Black. One more go, Sirius, and for Merlin's sake don't act like you're more scared than the spider this time."

Sirius gritted his teeth and raised the wand again. "Crucio!"

This time, the spell appeared to work. "Better," Bella told Sirius as he dropped the wand, pale and shaking. "When you're older, and you're using a wand that suits you better, you can't imagine how good it will feel." She closed her eyes and an expression of pure rapture crossed her face. "The power, the control. It's amazing." She shook her head as if to clear it and casually directed her wand at the box. "Avada Kedavra." There was a flash of green light. Bella casually transferred the newly dead spider from the box to a rubbish bin before she, Anna, and Sirius proceeded to the kitchen.

The meal was unusually calm. In fact, Anna could not remember another time when she, her sisters, and her cousins had been quite so well-behaved in the absence of specific instructions to be so. Uncle Orion appeared out of nowhere, looked Sirius and Regulus over, and vanished just as quickly. Neither Sirius nor Regulus ate very much, but no one seemed to feel that this unusual occurrence was worthy of comment.

Anna drifted back to her own room, thinking vaguely of writing the History of Magic essay that was due her first week back at Hogwarts. She had not yet put quill to parchment when a quiet knock on her open door announced Sirius' presence.

"Can I hide in here?" he asked without preamble.

"Depends what you're hiding from," Anna replied automatically. She wasn't quite as attached to her makeup as Cissa was, but if Sirius had been trying to make explosives with stolen eye shadow again, well, he deserved whatever he had coming.

"Everyone," he offered. "I don't want Aunt Druella to ask me weird questions and I don't want Cissa to keep telling me not to touch anything in her room and I don't want to do any more magic with Bella. I'll be quiet, I promise."

"Then you can hide in here," Anna agreed, feeling somewhat contrite for having suspected Sirius of getting up to mischief under the circumstances.

"Thank you." He grabbed the nearest book from her nearest bookshelf and curled awkwardly on the floor to read it. Anna sat at her desk and began to write the essay, which was exceptionally tedious. "What role did trolls play in the Fourteenth Century Wizards' Council?" she muttered aloud, forgetting that she was not alone.

"The Wizards' Council defined a being as any creature that walks on two legs, so the goblins thought it would be funny to bring trolls to the summit they were having."

Anna twisted in her chair to stare at Sirius. "How do you know that?"

Sirius shrugged. "I read it."

"Bella's like that, too," Anna said, copying Sirius's answer into her essay. "She remembers everything she reads. She only has to look once and she knows forever."

"Wish everyone would stop saying I'm so much like Bella," Sirius muttered.

"Why? Everyone says you and she are the cleverest and the best looking. The rest of us don't even rate."

"I don't think I like doing the Cruciatus Curse."

Anna's first thought was that nothing could have surprised her more. Her parents, and Sirius's parents, paid lip service to the rules restricting underage wizardry. Still, they asked remarkably few questions when confronted with overwhelming evidence that underage wizardry was flourishing in their homes. They also spoke loudly and often about what a shame it was that the new Hogwarts headmaster seemed disinclined to teach the students so-called "Dark" magic. Sirius, who had so far lived up to his position as the heir of the family without incident, didn't enjoy what was practically the family's signature curse?

Then she remembered that the day before, Sirius had been on the wrong end of that curse, even if he didn't remember it properly.

Then she remembered how white and shaky Sirius had been when he'd used the curse. Bella had obviously attributed it to nerves and magical inexperience. But when had Sirius ever been nervous about anything?

A great rush of love for her cousin overtook Anna. One Bella in the family was quite enough.

"If you want to know a secret," she whispered to Sirius, "I don't like it, either."

"Have you done it?" Sirius asked, scuttling along the floor so he was closer to Anna.

"Once. In the common room at school. I wanted to shut Bella up. So I did it—it isn't that hard as magic goes, as long as you can get up enough hate. But it really impresses people, and once you've done it no one asks you to do it again."

"So you have to do it when you get to Hogwarts?"

Anna laughed. "No. It's against about ten school rules. But in Slytherin House, well, if you don't want to stand out, it's something you do if you can."

"Don't care if I stand out. But what about the other houses?"

Anna rolled her eyes. "What about them? There's never been a Black that wasn't in Slytherin."

"Does it always go by family?"

"No. Not always." She remembered putting the Sorting Hat on her head months before. It had smartly flipped through her own thoughts and feelings and decided that her desire to be inconspicuously Sorted into Slytherin so that her family would not keep too close an eye on what she really did with her time proved that she belonged in her family's House after all. "If you really want to break tradition, Sirius, I'm sure you can. Positive. But don't tell anyone I've said that."

"I won't." Sirius punctuated his agreement with a sneeze. With a start, Anna realized that the floor on which he was sitting could get cold and drafty this time of year.

"Get off the floor," she said, feeling suddenly maternal. She threw a blanket over Sirius' shoulders and pulled a set of gobstones off of her shelf. They spent the rest of the afternoon happily playing games while Anna told Sirius more tales of Hogwarts.

From that day forward, Anna was not the fifth wheel when the Black Cousins were thrown together. Cissa and Regulus still reached instinctively for one another, but Sirius was at least as likely to seek out Anna as he was to seek out Bella.

It was not a change Anna minded at all.

_**To be continued.**_

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_Thank you for the reviews. _

_**Next chapter**__: Harry contemplates goblins. And snitches. And at least one werewolf._


	5. Present Warning

**The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf**

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

A week or so after Fred's funeral, Harry and Hermione were sprawled on the floor of the Burrow's living room playing chess two-on-one against Ron when Bill appeared and dropped a bag of gold beside Harry. Harry, happy to avert his eyes from the carnage that was his and Hermione's side of the chessboard, smiled up at Bill. "Thank you. Why?"

"It's from your vault at Gringotts," Bill explained, although Harry had already figured out that part. "I wouldn't go in there myself in the near future if I were you. It's dicey for me to go in there, and I've worked side-by-side with a fair number of those goblins for years."

A familiar feeling of guilt crept over Harry. "Are the goblins upset about us robbing Gringotts?"

Bill chuckled humorlessly. "That's putting it mildly." He looked over at Ron and Hermione, who had abandoned the game to listen. "Neither one of you should open up an account there, either."

"But what am I going to do with my piles of gold?" asked Ron with mock indignation. Harry and Hermione both laughed more than it was worth, because it was good to have Ron making attempts to joke again. It helped to know that Fred probably would have laughed, too.

"Build a fort with it, spend it all on ice cream, throw it in the lake, I don't care. But do _not_ go into Gringotts. You won't be safe. The goblins took that robbery rather personally. We've talked about this before, Harry. Goblins and humans don't think the same way. Think about what you learned in History of Magic."

"Bill?" Harry interrupted, feeling more guilty than ever. "I did a lot of things during History of Magic classes, but listening to Professor Binns really wasn't any of them." Hermione muffled a self-satisfied snicker. "I didn't even get an OWL. I got a D, and honestly I expected a T."

"They don't really give out Ts unless you hand in the parchment completely blank, or if you write something that has nothing to do with the subject," Bill half-lectured automatically, and for once Harry could see the former Head Boy in him. "Anyway, you know that even the long truces between wizards and goblins have been tenuous, and that sometimes it hasn't taken much—a misunderstanding, anything that could be interpreted as a lack of respect—to start a full-blown rebellion."

"You think there's going to be a goblin rebellion as a result of what we did?" asked Hermione, wide-eyed.

"But they'd have to be mental!" Ron said at the same time. "We only did that because there was no other way of stopping You-Know-Who! You-Know-Who would still be going around killing everyone he didn't like, including goblins, if we hadn't done that."

"And I think the majority of goblins accept that," Bill agreed. "That's why nothing has happened so far. But things are tense, and some goblins are fiercer than others. I've heard whisperings, and while I hope this doesn't come to anything, I don't think the three of you should provoke them by being anywhere near Gringotts. When you want your money, Harry, ask me."

"Why don't they just take Harry's money?" asked Ron. "He's got loads. They could say it's making up for what we took—"

"Obviously you never paid attention to Binns, either," said Bill wryly. "That's not how goblins think. The lowest thing a goblin can be is a thief, and while their definition of theft doesn't always overlap with a wizard's definition, they aren't going to enter a vault and take gold that doesn't belong to them."

"Yeah, we went through that with Griphook," Ron remembered.

"Good. So don't go through it again."

"Stay away from Gringotts and all the nutters who don't think we should have stopped You-Know-Who if it meant taking something out of his favorite Death Eater's vault. Got it," said Ron firmly.

"You're not as stupid as you look," said Bill in a brotherly way.

"Thanks. Tell that to Hermione."

"Ron's not as stupid as he looks," Bill repeated obediently.

"I know," said Hermione. Then, to Harry's shock and amusement, she blushed. "I mean, I don't think he looks stupid, either. I think he looks— well, perfect."

It was Ron's turn to blush, and Harry was torn between a morbid curiosity to see how this turned out and a desire to get far, far away. He chose the latter option, deciding that his friends didn't need his input in this particular situation, as this time they weren't choosing to explore their feelings in the middle of a battle for the future of the world.

He picked up his pleasantly full sack of gold and followed Bill into the kitchen. Neither Ron nor Hermione seemed to notice his exit; the chess set, too, lay forgotten.

He reached the kitchen just as Bill was vanishing into the fire, presumably returning to work or Shell Cottage. Mrs. Weasley was at the counter, cooking as usual, and George was seated at the table chopping vegetables for her.

Harry just stopped himself from doing a double-take when he realized that George was using a knife and a cutting board like a Muggle. George had never done anything by hand when magic would do since the day he'd turned seventeen.

"Hi, Harry," George managed when Harry entered. His voice was normal and even; he would have sounded downright normal for someone who wasn't George Weasley.

"Hello, Harry, dear," Mrs. Weasley added without turning to look at him. "Are you hungry?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Weasley."

"Did Bill bring you your gold?"

"Yes," Harry nodded. The sadness in the kitchen pressed in on the three of them like a heavy weight, and Harry knew that there was nothing he could do to make it better. "It was very nice of Bill to bring it for me."

"Bill's always been very thoughtful." Mrs. Weasley's voice broke, and she still didn't turn to face Harry, making it painfully obvious that Bill wasn't the child who was really on her mind.

"I thought maybe I'd go to Diagon Alley, and see if Quality Quidditch Supplies has opened again," Harry said to fill the space, even though he hadn't been thinking that at all. "I need a new broom."

"Make sure you use Floo Power," Mrs. Weasley told him. "Kingsley reminded Arthur the other day that neither you nor Ron ever passed your Apparition exam. I know you know how to Apparate, but it's against the law if you aren't licensed."

"Right," muttered Harry. "Good thing I haven't done it at least a thousand times in the last year, then."

"Yes, it is, dear," said Mrs. Weasley absently. George caught Harry's eye and, beneath the awful layers of unhappiness, Harry thought he saw something like a smirk.

"Want to come to Diagon Alley, George?"

To Harry's surprise, but not displeasure, George nodded and finished off his chopping. "I need to see what the store looks like. Have to open it again sometime."

As soon as they reached Diagon Alley, George left for his store, telling Harry to come by when he'd got his broom. Harry called his agreement to George's rapidly retreating back and set off to find Quality Quidditch Supplies.

The store looked more than a little worse for wear, but a bright blue sign flashing the words "Yes, We're Open!" filled the window before which Harry had once stood for hours at a time gazing at what was then the newest, most coveted broom in existence: the Firebolt.

He wondered whether Bill had withdrawn enough money for him to buy a new Firebolt. Sirius had given Harry his most recently destroyed broom, but hadn't ever told Harry how much it had cost. Come to that, the Nimbus 2000 that had preceded the Firebolt had been a present from Professor McGonagall. It was past time for Harry to purchase a broom for himself.

He was about to open the door when he jumped back, startled to see his own face staring at him. This, however, was not one of the "Undesirable" posters that had covered the wizarding world a few weeks before; instead, it read "Thank You, Harry Potter."

Harry was about to go straight to Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes' and tell George that Quality Quidditch Supplies was closed after all when the door swung open in his face. The proprietor had his wand raised in a defensive manner; this was a hard habit to break in the aftermath of a war. "If you're here to relieve yourself of your galleons, you're welcome to come in, but no loitering," he said.

Then the proprietor took a good look at Harry and dropped his wand. His eyes darted between Harry and his photograph. "Are you—"

"I'm Harry Potter," he said, wishing he could have been anyone else. He was getting quite sick of hearing his own name. Perhaps he would change it. Perhaps his next stop would be a store that sold Polyjuice potion.

"You are! Did you—did you need Quidditch supplies?" His eyes widened as if he didn't dare hope for something so wonderful as Harry patronizing his store. "I've read that you were the youngest Seeker for a Hogwarts House team in at least a century. We have snitches, if you'd like some to practice. Or perhaps new robes to support your favorite team?"

"I'm looking for a new broom."

"A new broom!" The proprietor clasped his hands as if he had never before been in the presence of someone who would be so clever as to come to a Quidditch store when he needed to purchase a broom. "Did you have a model in mind?"

"My last broom was a Firebolt."

The proprietor whistled. "I'd expect nothing less. That's still the top of the line. Not much innovation what with recent events, but you'd know all about that. Luckily, I have a few hidden away downstairs, under sufficient protection, of course. Let me bring them up for you."

Quick as a flash, he vanished and returned with two Firebolts. "Examine them. See if you prefer one."

They looked exactly identical to Harry. When he pulled them into his hand and mounted them, one after the other, they felt exactly identical as well. "Er—is there supposed to be a difference?"

"Not in quality, of course. But each is hand-crafted, and I thought a discerning customer such as yourself might have a preference."

Harry nodded and tried to look discerning. "This one," he said, lifting the first broom into the air once again.

"Excellent. Did you need it wrapped, or sent on ahead?"

"No. I can take it with me."

"Splendid. Was there anything else you needed?"

"No—wait," said Harry, staring at the new Firebolt and remembering his godfather. "Do you have anything that could be given as a gift to a baby?"

The proprietor's eyes lit with delight as he showed Harry baby-sized shirts, robes, and hats supporting various Quidditch teams; enchanted models of brooms and Quidditch players; plush toys in the shape of quaffles and snitches that were enchanted to vibrate without moving much and made interesting noises when squeezed; a music box that played the fight songs of six professional Quidditch teams; miniature brooms that rose barely six inches off the ground; colorful wall hangings; and an odd, soft box that had a mirror on one side and Quidditch symbols on the other eight.

He was tempted to buy the lot for Teddy, but settled for the plush snitch for the time being. He wasn't sure what was appropriate for a baby Teddy's age. Then again, Teddy might not even like Quidditch. Tonks had been brilliant, but rather clumsy, and she surely had not played on her House team. Remus, meanwhile, would never have done something that drew unnecessary attention to himself. Sirius had bought Harry his first broom for his first birthday, but Sirius had known that Harry's father had loved Quidditch, too…

"What do I owe you?" Harry asked the proprietor.

The wizard shook his head in horrified shock. "Your money is no good here."

Harry was about to ask why the proprietor had just spent the better part of an hour showing Harry brooms and toys if he didn't intend to let him purchase them when he realized that the wizard intended to make a present of them. "This is too much. I know what a Firebolt costs," well, he knew that it was a very lot, "and I know that no one's been able to earn a living during the war."

"The only reason that I'm not still in hiding is _you_," the wizard said fervently. "I couldn't take your money, I couldn't look myself in the mirror."

And he pushed Harry out of the store, barely acknowledging Harry's confused thanks.

Harry headed down the street at a swift enough pace to keep anyone from staring too long. Diagon Alley was recovering nicely; more stores were open than the last time he'd been here, and none of them seemed to specialize in Dark objects.

There was a small crowd gathered outside Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. Harry was able to spot George's bright head in the middle of it. A month before, Harry would have expected no less from George. The twins had always been the center of attention no matter what they did. Now, though, Harry suspected that the last thing George wanted was attention. But perhaps he was imagining things, since he himself could barely remember the last time he had been without unwanted attention.

"I don't know when we're opening again," George was saying as Harry got close enough to hear him. "We've lost most of our stock… Yes, we did run it owl-order for a while, but that's different, and the products we were offering were limited… Harry! Are you ready to go?"

"Stay, George," said one of the witches jocularly. "I'm sure Harry Potter can manage to fly wherever he's flying without your help."

"Actually, I've hardly ever flown except on a Quidditch pitch," said Harry truthfully, thinking that it would be nice to remedy that situation with Voldemort gone.

"You heard him," George told his audience. He reached inside the shop and grabbed a broom. "I'd never be able to open the store again if I didn't look out for Harry, Mum would have me locked up."

George magically locked the store and, with barely a backward wave to his admirers, led Harry to a secluded sort of nook off the side of the Alley. Harry looked around curiously; while he was slightly embarrassed to have it implied that he somehow needed George's protection, he never _had_ been here before.

"It's so we can get high enough not to be seen when we get over the Muggle world before we leave the Disillusionment charms over the area," he explained without being asked. Then he mounted his broom, wincing slightly as he did so. Harry was about to ask George if he thought that flying back was the best idea—they hadn't discussed it—but the set of George's jaw convinced him to stay silent.

As soon as they were properly in the air, Harry couldn't believe that he had ever considered questioning George's decision to fly back. The new broom responded to him as if he had been flying it all his life. He felt himself starting to smile. Flying was _wonderful _even in the worst of times, and it seemed like forever had passed since he'd flown for any reason other than to protect himself from mortal peril.

Then again, the release from mortal peril had come at a staggeringly high cost. The funerals and memorials had all been held now, but the grieving hadn't stopped. Nothing was going to give George his twin back. Nothing was going to give Teddy his parents back. Teddy was going to be like Harry, unable to remember the parents who had loved him so very much. At least Teddy, unlike Harry, wouldn't ever have to be confronted with the nasty surprise that sometimes his sainted dead father had been an idiotic, bullying git. Remus had been wonderful.

A niggling thought presented itself at the forefront of Harry's mind as he followed George's cue and veered around a low, puffy cloud.

Remus' body still hadn't been found. It was easy to attribute that to everyone having other priorities: homes to rebuild, dead to bury, bereaved to comfort. But maybe, just maybe, he didn't want to be found. Remus had, by necessity, been good at disappearing. He had thought about leaving Teddy once before Teddy had even been born. Perhaps, without Tonks around, he had again decided that Teddy would be better off without him?

_No_, Harry decided. Remus had loved Teddy far too much to leave him now. He had just had a moment of panic the previous year. If he was alive—and Harry couldn't deny that he was considering the possibility—he was either hurt or being held against his will.

_Or, he's dead. He was there in the Forest with your parents and Sirius, remember?_

That was true. But most everyone had believed the Deathly Hallows to be something out of a fairy tale, not something real. No one could know exactly how they worked; no one but Harry had united them for centuries, and he was no expert on powerful ancient objects. Maybe the stone had worked like the Mirror of Erised and shown him who he'd needed to see just when he was the most frightened. Maybe the story had got it wrong, and those who were called back from the dead _wanted_ to return to life, especially if they were called almost as soon as they died.

Two years ago, he had found it almost impossible to accept that Sirius was gone. There hadn't been a body then, either. _Is this some kind of Marauder thing?_ he wondered almost as if he expected his father or one of his friends to appear from thin air and answer him.

He would have to look for Remus on his own; he couldn't be a good little boy and accept dead as dead just because he was supposed to. For the past two years, he had heard on a daily basis that he was the only hope of victory in deadly war. He might be the only one who could find Remus, too.

The toy he had bought for Teddy suddenly felt heavy against his leg. Remus had trusted him to be Teddy's godfather for a reason. Whether Remus was dead or not, Harry was supposed to make sure that Teddy wasn't getting locked in a cupboard or hearing every day that he was a failure because he somehow didn't live up to his beloved dead parents. Right then the idea of looking out for Teddy seemed more daunting than being the Chosen One.

Almost before Harry reminded himself that if _Dudley_ of all people could look out for a baby, Harry certainly could, all thoughts fled his mind and he sent himself hurtling toward the ground at a terrific speed. George was suddenly far below him.

George must have lost control of his broom, or perhaps someone had jinxed it; Harry didn't know if George had tested it before removing it from his shop. Either way, the ground was approaching too fast for Harry's liking as he leaned flat against the broomstick and urged it to go faster than any broomstick had ever gone in pursuit of a snitch.

They were already lower than the trees when his fingertips grazed George's back. He couldn't stretch far enough to get a grip on George. This was it. After everything, they were both going to crash headlong into the grass and break every bone in their bodies.

Then he got his arms around George's waist and pulled him onto his own broom. The broom evened out a foot above the grass; Harry let it drift up and slow a bit before climbing off and catching his breath.

George walked off to collect his fallen, remarkably undamaged, broom. "Thank you," he managed when his back was turned.

Harry brushed the thanks off. "Was the broom jinxed?" he asked. George couldn't have lost control. George didn't lose control when two bludgers and a Slytherin player hit him simultaneously when he was already upside down—Harry had seen that one firsthand.

George didn't answer, though, because they were both distracted by a dozen figures running swiftly toward them. "Muggles?" Harry asked. He supposed that they could say they'd been skydiving and had already packed away their parachutes.

"Are you all right?" one bellowed.

"Amazing catch, amazing, international level seekers can't do that!" another was crowing. That eliminated the problem of explaining themselves to Muggles, at least.

"George?" added a third, familiar voice. "Harry?"

"That's Harry Potter!" Ten sets of eyes flickered to Harry's forehead. Harry clenched his fists to keep himself from trying to flatten his hair over his scar. Rather than meet the eyes of the ones he knew were gawking, he turned to see the one who had called George by name.

George was already pushing him away. "I'm fine, Wood."

Harry grinned for a second when he recognized Oliver Wood, who had been captain of the excellent Gryffindor Quidditch teams Harry and George had played on years before. Harry had only seen Wood a few times since they'd won the Quidditch Cup in Harry's third year, and his unexpected appearance reminded Harry of a simpler time.

Wood returned the smile. "You've still got it. Come play for United?"

This invitation was met with much jeering and complaining from Wood's companions. Now that Harry finally dared to look at them, he recognized several professional Quidditch players from various teams in the group.

"I taught him what a snitch is, didn't I, Potter?"

"He did," confirmed Harry.

Wood shook his head. "He didn't really need teaching. Didn't have to know what it was called to catch it. He was a first year and made catches like what he just did." He looked back at George. "Sure you're all right?"

George growled in response. "Stop pretending you care about whether I break my neck, Oliver, it isn't natural."

Wood shrugged. "I would've cared if you'd broken your neck and missed a match."

"He probably would have," Harry agreed. "If you'd broken your neck taking a bludger that let me get the snitch, that's what he would have been all for."

"So?" Wood asked, looking for all the world like he thought that a perfectly reasonable point of view. But something in his voice made Harry think that he was joking, and when Wood caught his eye for a second, Harry's suspicion was confirmed. His insides sank just a little. Five years ago, Wood wouldn't have meant it as a joke. It seemed that a few years of watching children get murdered had re-arranged his priorities, and that made Harry sad. George was right. It wasn't natural for Wood to think that anything was more important than the next Quidditch win.

"What're you doing here?" Harry asked, even though he was entirely sure where "here" was.

"Practice. Unofficial, since the league isn't back yet," he said, and Harry knew that he meant the Quidditch league, which during the war had been shut down like almost everything else that could possibly be any fun. "Some of us get together and play."

"Extreme circumstances," one of the witches said, and Harry noticed that she wore official Tornadoes insignia on her playing robes. "You couldn't get people from this many different teams looking at each other, let alone playing together, usually."

"You should join us next week," Wood said to Harry, and a few of his companions nodded eagerly.

Harry's heart leapt unexpectedly; he missed Quidditch, and he had to admit that it would be fun to try himself against professionals. He thought he might have begged them to let him start playing right then if it hadn't been for George.

"You could come too," Wood said to George. "If you think you can stay on your broom, and you can take time out from making love potions for loony teenage girls."

George immediately protested that he could never let down the lovesick teenage girls, and soon he and Harry found themselves escorted to a small home with a fire connected to the Floo Network. George grabbed Harry's wrist just before he stepped into the flames. "No one hears about what happened, especially not my mother."

Harry nodded uncomfortably.

Almost as soon as he was back at the Burrow, though, he felt ready to leave again. He and Ginny had barely spoken since the argument they'd had after Colin's funeral. Ron and Hermione were still staring rather disturbingly at each other and blushing over things Harry was entirely unable to perceive. He wasn't eager to lie to everyone and say that nothing eventful had happened on the trip to Diagon Alley and that George certainly hadn't nearly died losing control of a broom, either.

He mumbled an excuse about going to give Teddy his new present and hoped that Mrs. Tonks would let him visit his godson without much notice. Since Mrs. Tonks didn't seem to like him in any situation, it wouldn't make much difference if he showed up without warning.

Indeed, Mrs. Tonks noticed him when he appeared outside the Tonks home and opened the door for him. He was pleased that she hadn't grabbed Teddy and run.

"I brought a gift for Teddy," he said, holding it out before him like a peace offering. "If that's okay with you," he added, not mentioning aloud that one way or another Teddy would be getting the toy no matter what she thought.

Mrs. Tonks didn't quite smile, as she cast an appraising eye over the toy, but she did give a nod of approval. "You can go upstairs and see if he's awake."

"Thank you," Harry said. It felt odd to be wandering about this house alone.

Teddy's room was easily found, and as Teddy was asleep in his crib, Harry looked around it at his leisure. He didn't remember being a baby (except for the memory of his parents' murders, which clearly didn't count), but he thought that he might have liked to have had a room like this one. It was bright and colorful and full of toys and pictures. It was, of course, nothing like the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys' house on Privet Drive.

Presently, Teddy awoke. His bright eyes focused on Harry after an obvious effort.

Harry unveiled the plush snitch and placed it in the crib beside Teddy. He was tempted to pick Teddy up, but realized he wasn't quite sure how to do that without breaking him. Maybe he should use a levitation charm? That seemed risky, too.

"This is for you," he told Teddy unnecessarily. "I wasn't sure what you'd like."

Teddy stared at the snitch, but didn't respond.

"When you can tell me what you want, you can have it. Anything." A quick image of a young Dudley flitted through Harry's mind and horrified him. "Well, almost anything. And not everything. But really good stuff, definitely." Then he remembered learning for the first time that his parents had left him a full bank account, and inheriting Sirius' enormous pile of gold. "Of course, things will just be things. What you're going to end up wanting is your parents, and no one can give you that."

He was about to tell Teddy was he suspected that Mrs. Tonks had already told him—that his parents had died because they wanted him to live in a safe, Voldemort-free world—but the words stuck in his throat.

"Unless your dad isn't dead. Your mum, they found her body. They buried it. But your dad, there was something weird about it. So, if he's alive, I'll bring him back to you. I promise."

His heart skipped a beat as his eyes fell on the photograph of Remus and Tonks that held a place of honor beside Teddy's crib. It would be nice if he could bring Remus back to himself, too. He would ask him whether he thought he should go back to Hogwarts for an "eighth" year, or start working right away instead. And he would ask Remus why he'd never managed to mention that Lily and Snape had been close friends. No, that sounded too accusatory—he wouldn't jump right into that. He'd apologize properly for the way he'd attacked Remus in Grimmauld Place before the Horcrux search had begun in earnest. It was no matter that Remus had forgiven him; he'd gotten too nasty, too fast, and he'd never gotten another chance to have a real conversation with the man.

"I miss him, too," he told Teddy. "And your mum. She was great. You were so lucky to get them as parents, and then so unlucky to lose them." He rolled his eyes. "I know what that's like, believe me. We can talk about that in eight or ten years. Or sooner, later, whenever you're ready. We Voldemort orphans stick together. I didn't meet any besides me until I was eleven, and then I didn't always know when I was meeting one. But the day your childhood starts looking like mine, I'm coming in here and taking you somewhere no one will ever find you."

He broke off his one-sided conversation abruptly when he noticed Mrs. Tonks in the doorway and was forced to wonder how much she had heard.

_**To be continued.**_

* * *

_Thank you for the reviews. _

_**Next chapter**__: Andromeda is __**not**__ the Black family's first priority. She's good with that._


	6. Past Epistle

**The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf**

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

"_I'm coming in here and taking you somewhere no one will ever find you."_

Andromeda played the words over in her head for the hundredth time since she'd heard them. She'd let Harry think she hadn't overheard a thing. She understood, better than most, the benefits of feigning ignorance. Silence could be ignored until it was too late for anyone to stop you. So many people didn't grasp that one could be outwardly passive because she was biding her time, not because she was too weak to disagree or fight.

Many years later, the extent to which her family had missed the signs that she was not willing to lead a "respectable" Black life still astounded her.

But then again, her cousin had provided a most convenient smokescreen. Why would anyone pay Andromeda's silent plotting any heed when Sirius had been making a scene at every opportunity?

X

Andromeda sat up straight in her seat at the Slytherin table and gave a tiny smile to a friend who was watching her with extreme sympathy. Everyone else in the Great Hall was eagerly catching up with classmates who had been elsewhere for more than two months. Andromeda was sitting silently between her two sisters, with room left for Sirius to sit between her and Bellatrix.

Bellatrix had insisted that they sit together at the opening feast so the other students would be reminded who Sirius was and not attempt to lead him astray. Andromeda had heard her sister's whispered promise to Aunt Walburga on Platform 9¾: _"I'll fix Sirius." _

Andromeda didn't think that Sirius needed any fixing, but no one had asked her. She hadn't volunteered her opinion, either; if she had, her mother might have started encouraging Bellatrix to fix Andromeda, too.

Not that Bellatrix needed encouraging. "Don't look at her, look at me," Bellatrix hissed.

Andromeda allowed herself a rare moment of insolence as she stared into her elder sister's eyes.

Bellatrix lost the impromptu staring contest, and, infuriated, immediately attempted to cover with an outraged, ranting lecture. "Why aren't you more nervous? You saw Sirius this summer. You know he's getting worse and worse with those… ideas. Did I tell you Rodo found out who that boy he was with on the train was? Name's Potter. Blood-traitor if there ever was one. It's not just the parents, either, the little boy started spewing integrationist dogma when he heard someone call a mudblood a mudblood."

"At least he's a pureblood," said Andromeda, with the twinge of guilt to which she occasionally subjected herself when she outwardly toed the racist, intolerant family line.

"Small favors," muttered Bellatrix darkly. "They won't see each other much after the Sorting. Potter's probably a Gryffindor, and Sirius will be here where we can keep an eye on him."

They lapsed into brooding silence until the door burst open and Hagrid entered with a raggedy collection of thoroughly over-excited, thoroughly grimy eleven-year-olds. Sirius was easy to pick out of the crowd; he was taller than most of the rest, and, despite the mischief he'd been causing on the train, he looked more composed. There was something about the Black features, the Black hair, the Black posture that made Black children look precocious and distinguished through no fault of their own.

He was still talking animatedly to the Potter boy. Bellatrix scowled harder than ever beside Andromeda.

Luckily, only a few students were to be Sorted before Sirius. Andromeda barely noticed who they were or what the Hat did with them. Her stomach was suddenly tied in knots for Sirius, although he didn't look nervous. He sent a cheeky grin at the Great Hall before the Hat fell over his eyes.

It was neither a particularly fast Sorting (the Hat hadn't even touched Narcissa's brow the year before) nor a particularly slow one (Ted Tonks, from Andromeda's year in Hufflepuff, had taken the better part of three minutes). But, as Andromeda might have expected of Sirius, it turned out to be the only Sorting she was sure no one in the room would ever forget.

The wizarding community was very well-educated about itself, and it was rare indeed that a wizard managed to surprise his extended family. Everyone knew which families belonged in Gryffindor, or Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff, or, especially, Slytherin. Sortings went as predicted, with the odd Ravenclaw from a Slytherin family or Hufflepuff from a Gryffindor family. There would be a few wildcard Muggle-borns, who the Slytherins sneered shouldn't have been there to begin with. The vast majority of a Sorting was a confirmation, not a revelation.

So when, after twenty or thirty seconds, the Sorting Hat announced that Sirius Black—of _those_ Blacks— was a "GRYFFINDOR!" a horrible, excited tension suddenly filled the air.

The Ravenclaw table, waiting to hear the hat cry "Slytherin!," sat silent.

The Hufflepuff table, waiting to hear the hat cry "Slytherin!," sat silent.

The Slytherin table booed.

The Gryffindor table, for once in agreement with its longtime rival, booed until the Head Boy, a strongly built seventeen-year-old named Frank Longbottom, told them in no uncertain terms that they would greet their newest member with respect. By the time Sirius had made the long walk to the table, his new housemates were holding out their hands to him, telling him congratulations and occasionally mumbling "sorry, mate."

Everyone else stared alternately at Sirius, sitting at the end of his less-than-welcoming housemates' table, and at Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa sitting in a perfect row.

Bellatrix started to stand, obviously ready to scream that it had been a mistake and the Hat would have to try again, but Narcissa reached across Andromeda and pulled her down. "Not in front of everyone," she whispered so that only her sisters could hear.

To Andromeda's shock, Bellatrix obeyed. They, like everyone else, sat in shock for the rest of the Sorting. Entire Houses forgot to applaud for their new members. Sirius' new friend the Potter boy (to make things worse for Bellatrix, he _was_ a Gryffindor) looked most put-out that he was not receiving the attention Sirius had, but most of the first years seemed grateful for the comparative anonymity.

Slytherin House did manage to muster up a proper cheer for a sallow-skinned, greasy-haired young boy called Severus Snape.

"What's so special about him?" someone wanted to know, and someone else whispered, reverently "Bet you he knows more hexes and curses and Dark Arts than half the seventh years."

"A proper Slytherin," said Bellatrix in a hoarse whisper that did not sound like her own. She barely touched the magnificent feast that was spread before them when the Sorting was done, and she periodically glared at Andromeda and Narcissa for not appearing to be as distraught as she was.

It was arguably the best feast of the year, but the ending couldn't come fast enough for Andromeda. "Wait for me in the Common Room," hissed Bellatrix before she took off for the High Table where the professors sat.

Andromeda found herself pushed along to the Slytherin Common Room by the other Slytherin students, all haughtily pretending that they weren't eager for another year at Hogwarts while pushing hard and fast to get back to their "home."

Andromeda almost fell to the ground when Ted Tonks caught her eye and smiled from amidst the Hufflepuffs marching toward their own dormitory, which was somewhere near the kitchen. The Hufflepuffs, unlike the Slytherins, didn't pretend apathy; they shouted and celebrated and pounded each other on the back in delight. The Slytherins sneered.

Andromeda focused on picking herself up and putting one foot in front of the other while ignoring the fact that the swooping sensation she got every time Ted smiled was the way she was supposed to feel about a pureblood, and only a pureblood. Her family would never stand for her dating a Muggle-born Hufflepuff, which didn't matter yet because she didn't even know if Ted liked her back. It was more than likely that he didn't almost fall over just because she smiled. Ted smiled at everyone and talked to everyone, no matter what their House or year. That was one of the things she liked about him.

The Slytherin Common Room was under the lake, and had a surreal greenish glow to it that Andromeda quite enjoyed. She and her friends pulled their favorite chairs into a quiet corner where Andromeda could watch as the light danced eerily over everyone else while the other girls peppered her with questions. There was a decidedly favorite topic of the day.

"Has your cousin always been the weird one in your family?"

"I thought you said you _liked_ him?"

"It happens in the best of families—it's not your fault, or your sisters'. Did I ever tell you about my Mum's sister we don't meet?"

It was almost a relief when Bellatrix grabbed Andromeda by the front of her robes and dragged her over to where Narcissa was draped across a table, the better to display her budding figure to the much-older boys who were looking on appreciatively. Bellatrix used her other hand to grab hold of Narcissa and marched both of her sisters to the fifth year girls' dormitory.

One of Bellatrix's roommates was already half-asleep in her green-curtained bed. Bellatrix released her grip on her sisters to draw her wand. "Get out, Thomasine, you can come back in two hours," Bellatrix ordered. Thomasine obeyed without so much as a complaint or a dirty look; the pecking order had long since been established.

With Thomasine gone, Bellatrix locked the door against any other roommates who might return, tossed herself on her own bed, and let out a half-infuriated, half-bereaved scream that sent shivers down Andromeda's spine.

Andromeda and Narcissa exchanged a glance. Neither of them was as upset as Bellatrix; indeed, neither of them was upset at all. But advising Bellatrix of this fact would not be wise, and so they remained silent until Bellatrix caught her breath.

"I went to Sluggy," she said at last. "I told him that the Hat made a mistake, that we can't condemn Sirius for the rest of his life because he decided to be a smartass one day when he was eleven years old. I said that we needed a re-Sort. Everyone in the Great Hall knew something was wrong when it Sorted him." Her pale face was livid with anger. "And that condescending old wanker said _no_! He told me how he would've liked to have had Sirius in Slytherin, too, but that the Hat knows what it's doing and that Sirius will get a fine education with the Mudbloods and blood traitors and whatever they let into Gryffindor."

Two tears dropped down Bellatrix's ashen cheeks, and Andromeda stared in spite of herself. She did not remember ever having seen Bellatrix cry before; she doubted that she would ever see it again.

"Why are you crying?" asked Narcissa, so stunned by her eldest sister's display of emotion that for once she sounded like a child who hadn't thought out her every word long before she spoke it.

"Why aren't you?" asked Bellatrix with another moan. "He's our cousin, and he's _dead_!"

"He's not dead, Bellatrix, he's in Gryffindor."

"It's the same thing!" Bellatrix snapped. "It's the same to us. If you don't understand that, neither of you are Blacks. No one's going to teach him to have pride in himself or remember his station in Gryffindor. No one's going to teach him subtlety or patience or morals. He's just going to be charging into the nearest fight with filthy trash at his side. A fine education—a fine education, Slughorn says! He's no true Slytherin himself, under Dumbledore's thumb like he is. There's a Muggle in his family tree, at least one. Gryffindors, educated! Gryffindors don't learn! Gryffindors don't think! That House will turn our cousin into a common—a common—just _common_!oHH"

Shakily, Bellatrix rose off of her bed and paced the length of the room. "Uncle Orion and Aunt Walburga are going to have to pull him out of school unless they can get him switched into Slytherin. Maybe Durmstrang is the best place for him."

Narcissa shuddered. "Ooo, not out there with all that ice," she said. She had never been especially fond of Sirius, but Durmstrang seemed a rather severe punishment to her.

Bellatrix rounded on her sister. "You'd rather he stay in Gryffindor?" She shook her head, and her curtain of thick black hair swung impressively. "Sirius was never special to you like he was to me. I remember the day he was born. I was four years old, and I didn't want another baby in the family, certainly not a boy to take the attention from me. But Uncle Orion put Sirius in my arms and he looked at me and I knew—I _knew_! He was like me, he was smart, he was driven, he was meant to be a Black. He was born for it like I was born for it. I could _kill_ him for this. _I COULD KILL HIM_!"

Bellatrix's shriek echoed off the walls of the dormitory.

"There's nothing we can do about it. Not tonight," said Andromeda into the eerie silence that followed Bellatrix's proclamation. Her words hung there like Bellatrix's had; she hoped with all of her heart that Bellatrix wouldn't say that they _could_ do something, they could walk right over to Gryffindor Tower and murder Sirius right then and there.

"No," Bellatrix agreed, her beautiful face a mask of agony. "But stay with me while I write home, won't you, Anna, Cissy?" The childhood nicknames that had been discarded when they'd become _real_ Blacks, Hogwarts students on the pureblood marriage market, reminded Andromeda for a moment of the time when Bellatrix had not terrified her. That time seemed a million years ago.

"Of course," Andromeda and Narcissa answered as one.

Bellatrix went to her truck and resolutely withdrew fresh parchment, quills, and ink. She seated herself behind a desk, and Andromeda and Narcissa pulled chairs up to either side of her. They watched as she wrote.

_Dearest Aunt Walburga,_

_It is with heavy heart that I write to inform you of the results of this evening's Sorting. It pains me to be the one to deliver such an unwelcome message to you, but neither can I bear to allow you to learn this news from an unkind source._

_Sirius was Sorted into Gryffindor House this most unlucky night._

_Please take some small comfort in the knowledge that my sisters and I share your pain, and will do all in our sadly inadequate power to aid you in this your time of need._

_I have, of course, informed Professor Slughorn that the Sorting Hat was mistaken; everyone in the Hall knew that this was so. He has thus far refused to remedy the situation._

_With my condolences and those of my sisters, I offer you my deepest regrets for anything I may have done which may have led my young cousin to such an unfortunate fate. I believed that I had taken my role as the eldest Black cousin seriously. I believed that I had guided Sirius appropriately and protected him well. It is revealed now that I have not done so, and I will redouble my efforts whilst he remains in my care at Hogwarts. _

_Please share our condolences with Uncle Orion and Regulus, who I know share your grief. Hug Regulus for us; the pressure that rests upon him (hopefully temporarily) as the sole Black heir may seem frightening, but we have faith that he is nothing like his brother._

_I shall close now because I know that you need time to mourn._

_I remain,_

_Your Most Obedient Niece,_

_Bellatrix Black_

Bellatrix passed the quill to Andromeda, who added her name to the letter while trying not to roll her eyes so that her sisters could see. Finally, Narcissa added her name with a flourish, and the younger sisters were free to leave Bellatrix to her own brooding.

The next morning began with four Howlers: one each to Bellatrix, Andromeda, Narcissa, and Sirius.

Andromeda knew well what hers would say, and didn't bother trying to make it out over the simultaneous shouting of her sisters' Howlers and the obnoxious laughter from some of the other students. She caught a few words:

"_HOW DARE YOU! YOU WERE TOLD TO LOOK OUT FOR YOUR COUSIN AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED! YOU ARE AS MUCH A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY NAME AS HE IS!" _

At the other end of the Slytherin table, Narcissa sat impassively among a group of older students, showing no sign that she realized the shouting had anything to do with her. Bellatrix, sitting across from Narcissa, stared at her Howler with bright eyes and a repentant, guilty face.

Andromeda snuck a surreptitious glance at the Gryffindor table. Sirius was still with the messy-haired boy from the night before, James Potter, and they were _laughing_. Any worries she might have had about Sirius' well-being evaporated, which was just as well, because Ted caught her eye from the Hufflepuff table and she suddenly wished she could be absolutely certain that her hair looked just right. At least it was Charms Club that evening, and she would see Ted then. She wasn't quite sure why he had joined Charms Club, considering that he didn't especially seem to enjoy that branch of magic, but he always sat next to her, so she wasn't about to question his reasons.

X

Andromeda shook off her memory angrily. She had found herself daydreaming about the past more and more since she'd lost Nymphadora, and she was going to have to break the habit. Remembering that she had begun life as a Black was neither soothing nor distracting. It merely added insult to injury. She had led a calm, proper, polite, if somewhat reclusive life; it wasn't her fault that she'd been born into a family famed for its ability to spread pain and hatred. It wasn't her fault that Blackness still bubbled inside of her even if she hadn't let it see the light of day in many years.

As usual, she pushed down a flare of anger. As she did so, she found that the anger was directed not at her former family but at Ted. Why had he bothered joining a club he didn't like just to be near her, if he was only going to die a mere thirty years later? It had passed in the blink of an eye.

Then there was Sirius, her so-called favorite cousin who had dragged the Potters into their sphere to try to take Teddy away. She wasn't too pleased with him, either.

Alone in her house, Andromeda fumed.

_To be continued._

_**Next chapter**__: So, those goblins? Bill was right._


	7. Present Threat

**The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf**

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

To Harry's immense relief, it took Ron and Hermione only a few days to remember how to speak to each other without blushing, stammering, or otherwise triggering his desire to flee. Just after their Order of Merlin ceremony (which Harry spent under his invisibility cloak so as to guarantee that the crowd's attention remained where it belonged), they informed him that they now considered themselves boyfriend and girlfriend. Harry refrained, with some effort, from making a reply along the lines of "no fucking kidding," and suddenly their three-way dynamic was as good as it had ever been.

To make things even better, Ginny seemed to have let the incident at Colin's funeral slide into the past, and she began actively seeking out Harry's company. One morning, she came into the Burrow's living room, sat beside Harry, and took his hand in hers. Hermione smiled, which was to be expected, but so did Ron, which was a major improvement over the last several times he'd seen them together.

Unfortunately, Hermione decided to interrupt the blissful moment with a rather bossy declaration. "We have to decide what we're going to do about school. Now."

"We dropped out of school over a year ago. Did you forget?" asked Ron, apparently unable to stop himself.

"Do we have to talk about this now?" added Harry, who would much rather have focused all of his attention of the feel of Ginny's hand in his own. If they were going to have a serious discussion, he at least wanted it to be about Remus, but he wasn't sure how to bring up that particular topic.

"_Yes_," Hermione told Harry. "And no," she added to Ron. "But we've done what we dropped out to do, so we need to decide whether to drop back in."

"Will they take us if we want to?" Harry thought it was a reasonable question, but the other three looked to be swallowing their laughter.

Ginny squeezed his hand more tightly, and any offense Harry might have been inclined to take at the swallowed snickers vanished. "I hate to break it to you," said Ginny, "but a few people at Hogwarts _might_ still remember who you are, and they _might_ be willing to let you come back there to try for your NEWTs."

"But everyone who we'd want to give us jobs knows who we are, too, and they won't care if we ever made it through NEWT level," Ron added.

Harry shook his head. The idea of going back to school was bizarre, but the idea not having to follow the rules everyone else followed because seventeen years ago his mother had thrown herself between him and Voldemort was repulsive. "We have to go back," he told them. "At least, I have to. You're supposed to have your NEWTs to apply to be an auror, so I'm going to have them."

"That's what I thought, too," said Hermione. "Well, not about being an auror, but I can't imagine not taking my last year of lessons just because there was an… interruption I couldn't do anything about."

"I wonder if they'll let you be Head Girl?" Ron wondered aloud. "We all know you would have got it if we'd stayed."

Hermione looked rather pleased for a moment, but corrected Ron. "Actually, I wouldn't have been let in last year, Head Girl or any other way. They weren't taking Mudbloods."

"Don't call yourself that!" snapped Harry, Ron, and Ginny in unison.

"Why not?" Hermione rolled her eyes and the other three glared. Hermione didn't bother to continue the battle. It wasn't the one she'd intended to fight. "Ron?" she asked.

"Hermione?" he answered.

"School. Harry and I said yes. What do you say?"

Ron groaned. "What's wrong with taking honorary NEWTs? We learned loads last year, without getting detention every five minutes for not being in bed on time or dripping water in the corridors when we came in from outside."

There was a sparkle in the back of Hermione's eyes that Harry had long ago learned was cause for concern. "So if we could take the lessons and still be treated like adults, you would do it?"

"I guess."

"Good! It's settled, then!" Hermione smiled brightly at all of them.

Harry and Ron looked at each other to assure themselves that they had both missed something. "What's settled?" Harry asked Hermione at last.

"I was talking to Professor McGonagall the other day, and she told me that the students in our position have three options. We can enroll like regular seventh years, we can stay away like anyone else over seventeen, or we can audit the classes. That means we see the professors' lesson plans ahead of time, and we only come to class if it's something we haven't covered. So if you think you could do as well as you want on your Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWT without ever going to another lesson, you don't have to go to any lessons at all. We wouldn't be living in the dormitories, so that's no curfew," she smiled at Ron. "And no extra responsibilities, like prefects or Quidditch—we'd spend the time we needed studying, and the rest would be our own, since we wouldn't really be students."

Harry was surprised that Hermione, who had always been rather severe about what she saw as his and Ron's lackadaisical attitude to their studies, would advocate such a thing. "This is really what you want?" he asked her.

Hesitance flickered across her face. "I don't know, but we can't just pretend last year didn't happen. This seems like the best compromise."

Harry nodded. As much as Hogwarts had been the first and only place he had really felt at home, pretending to be a regular student after his recent experiences turned his stomach. "If we aren't living in the dormitories, where will we be living? Do we get flats?"

"Brilliant!" Ron said. "That would be fun. We could go live in Hogsmeade, or Diagon Alley like George. Would we live together?"

A few months ago, the obvious answer would have been yes, but Harry had to admit that living with Ron and Hermione under the current circumstances could get decidedly awkward. Hermione seemed to catch his thought, because she smiled again. "Don't worry, Harry, that won't be a problem."

"What?" Ron wanted to know.

"We won't snog in front of him if we're all living together."

"Oh. Right." Ron lowered his voice. "And no way would Mum let the two of us," he gestured at himself and Hermione, "live together without you there, too." Everyone seemed to accept this as true; that they were all legally adults in no way meant that Mrs. Weasley had no say over their living arrangements. "Still, eighteen and getting my first flat! I don't think anyone we know from our year at school has one yet."

"Sirius got one the day he turned seventeen," Harry said, although he wasn't sure why.

"Sirius was escaping his nutter family, that doesn't count," Ginny said.

Something jolted inside Harry. Both Ginny's voice and Sirius' name had that effect on him, for very different reasons. A rush that was simultaneously warm and cold covered his as he remembered one of the first times he and Ginny had had a proper conversation. It had been his fifth year at school, Ginny's fourth, and Harry had been desperate to find a way to speak to Sirius about the images he had seen in Snape's Pensieve that had led to the end of their Occlumency lessons. He had never shared this story in its entirety with his friends. Now that Snape was dead, and now that Harry knew why he had tried to hide that particular memory from him, he found that he wanted to do so.

He shifted his hand in Ginny's so that their fingers were laced together and turned to look directly at her. "Remember the year Umbridge was at Hogwarts and I wanted to talk to Sirius? You got Fred and George to let me use their swamp and everything as a distraction?"

Ginny nodded, her eyes bright, presumably at the mention of Fred.

"You never asked me why I wanted to talk to him, you just fixed it so I could. I always appreciated that."

"Am I going to find out why now?" she asked, making an obvious effort to sound impish, although her curiosity appeared to be genuine.

"If you want."

"I always wanted to know."

"When Snape was teaching me Occlumency, he'd take memories out of his head and put them in a Pensieve to stop me coming across them," Harry began. "So one day he wasn't there, but the Pensieve was, and—"

"You didn't!" interrupted Hermione, scandalized.

"Of course he did," said Ron and Ginny, who despite recent revelations about Snape's true loyalties seemed to find Snape-abuse a fine thing to recount on a lovely summer morning.

"I did. And what I saw was—well, they had just taken their OWLs. Sirius said he was bored, so my dad started calling Snape names, disarmed him, cast _scourgify_ on his mouth, and then _levicorpus_, with Sirius and Wormtail laughing, and Remus didn't like it but it's not like he told them to stop."

"That's disgusting."

"Snape probably deserved it. Would've done the same thing if—"

"Anyway," Harry continued, "My mum showed up and made them stop. She _hated_ my dad, said she'd rather go out with the giant squid than him. Then Snape called her a Mudblood, so she left and let them go back to it. When Snape came back and caught me, he said he'd never teach me Occlumency again. I didn't care about that, because I hated it. But I was driving myself crazy—crazier than usual— wondering if my dad was— if maybe he'd forced my mum into marrying him, what my dad and Sirius were really like— so I _had_ to talk to Sirius, really talk to him."

"What did he say?"

"Well, once I got done basically accusing Sirius of being a bully and a thug, he said a lot of people were idiots when they were fifteen and he wasn't proud of what he'd done, and that my mum didn't really hate my dad and that she wanted to go out with him once he stopped hexing people for the fun of it. Remus was there too, he kind of defended Sirius, Sirius kind of defended him, they both talked about how great my dad was."

"You told us Sirius told you to keep up the Occlumency lessons," said Hermione with a hint of reprimand.

"He said that too. I didn't want to tell you what I saw, I guess I thought it was Snape's business and I was ashamed of feeling the way I did about my dad and Sirius. But when Snape died, I realized the memory wasn't so awful to him because of what my dad and Sirius did, it was because he called my mum a Mudblood and that made her give up on him. So it's okay to say now, and," again he turned to face Ginny properly, "to thank you for giving me a chance to hear Sirius and Remus say what they said. I needed that more than I ever needed more lessons with Snape."

"You're welcome," said Ginny in a voice rather thicker than usual, and Harry was glad for the umpteenth time that Ginny was rarely weepy.

"Well," said Ron, a little too loudly, which let Harry know that Hermione actually _was_ crying and was pretending she wasn't, "Want to go to Diagon Alley and see what the flats are like? I need owl treats for Pigwidgeon, anyway."

Harry looked down. It had been almost a year since he'd had an owl who needed treats, but sometimes Hedwig's absence struck him suddenly, just as Sirius' or Dumbledore's or Fred's did.

"You could get a new pet," Ginny suggested, reading his thoughts. "It's been a year."

"Maybe I'll get a toad," said Harry, since Neville Longbottom's toad, Trevor, was about the farthest thing from Hedwig he could imagine. "No more owls. There are post owls to carry mail."

The four of them stood up to get themselves ready for the trip. It was understood that Ginny would come along even though she would be finishing her final year at Hogwarts the proper way, and that made something deep inside Harry very happy.

George stepped out of his bedroom and stopped Harry as he ran down the stairs from Ron's room with his money and his cloak. "Is it okay with you if I go over to Grimmauld Place today?" he asked without preamble. "I need fresh doxy venom, and there might be some doxies there, now that it's been abandoned for a while again."

"All right with me," Harry agreed. "But you'd have to Apparate to right outside the front door, and the defenses Mad-Eye set up for Snape are still working."

Ginny appeared beside Harry and George so suddenly that Harry wondered if she had Apparated. "We'll go with you," she told George, as she caught Harry's eye. "They're snogging again. I might rethink that sharing a flat thing if I were you, Harry."

Considering what had happened the last time he'd been out with George, Harry decided that it was lucky that Ginny had decided to accompany him and agreed to the change in destination without complaint.

When Ron and Hermione followed them to Grimmauld Place not ten minutes later, loudly protesting that they had _not_ been doing anything to justify Ginny's accusation, Harry realized that it hadn't been luck at all—Ginny had been actively looking out for George. Luckily, George had vanished to the attic by then and could not witness Ginny's silent confirmation that she was following George, not fleeing Ron and Hermione.

Hermione had brought along the beaded bag that had served her, Harry, and Ron so well during the previous year, so they used this opportunity return Phineas Nigellus' portrait to its proper place.

"Am I to believe that you have at last deigned to return me to the house of my forefathers?"

In spite of himself, Harry jumped a little. He was used to the subjects of portraits wandering into and out of their frames by now, but Phineas Nigellus knew how to make an entrance, as much as a painted object could.

"Personally, I'd rather live inside that bag than here," Ron muttered, and Ginny giggled appreciatively.

"Exactly the kind of uninteresting, unoriginal remark I have regrettably come to expect from you," sighed Phineas Nigellus. "Is it too much to hope for that you will remove this unsightly stain as well?" He gestured to the blindfold Hermione had placed over his eyes many months before.

"Sorry, Professor Black," said Hermione, who was usually courteous to the painting, although it liked her no better for this. "It was necessary. _Finite obscuro_!" The blindfold vanished.

Phineas Nigellus used his newly uncovered eyes to glower at all of them. "Dare I ask what you intend to do with my house?"

"It's Harry's house," said Ron and Ginny together, presumably to aggravate Phineas Nigellus further.

"Unfortunately," Harry added for much the same reason. "Do you happen to know anyone in the market for a house full of screaming, disgusting, bigoted decorations we can't get off the walls? Anyone who isn't in Azkaban or on the way there, that is?"

"Insolent!" snarled Phineas Nigellus, and he vanished from his frame.

"You know, that's a good point," said Ron, sinking onto the bed he had used when he and Harry had shared this room a lifetime ago. "What _are_ you going to do with this place?"

"If I thought it would burn, I'd burn it. I can't imagine anyone wanting to live here. Well, I can, but anyone who would want to probably _does_ belong in Azkaban."

"You definitely can't burn stuff off the walls," Ron said. "You weren't here the day Sirius tried it. Fred and George thought it was hilarious, until Sirius' mother's portrait went—well, maybe when we're aurors we can bring the people we catch through here to prove what you turn into if you go that way. If that wouldn't scare them straight, nothing would."

Hermione gave a small squeal and her eyes went very round. Harry and Ron turned to look at her. "That's brilliant," she told Ron. "You're brilliant."

"Why?" asked Ron, who nonetheless looked very pleased at the compliment.

"That's what Harry should do with this house. He should have it made into a museum. Not just to warn people about what Dark magic looks like, but this was Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. People will want to see that. Half the reason You-Know-Who got so powerful this last time was because no one would believe the signs, hardly anyone even knew what to look for. This could teach—students from Hogwarts, or even schools in other countries, could come and see why it's wrong to put emphasis on purity of blood, why it's wrong to butcher house-elves, what you should do when you see a wizard starting to go bad. We could make records of what happened while it's still fresh in everyone's mind, so that a hundred years from now no one's forgotten what happens if you let someone like You-Know-Who get a foothold. We'll put the real story out there so the history isn't being written by fools like Rita Skeeter."

Her eyes were blazing now as she looked Harry full in the face. "You should ask Kingsley about it next time you see him."

"I don't know," said Harry, who was reluctant to speak to the Minister of Magic about anything, least of all his real estate quandaries.

"Then I will, if it's all right with you? Please? It's not like you'd want to live here, and it's not like you'd need the money from selling it if you could. It's like— well, like your parents' house in Godric's Hollow," she said with a bit of apology. "Or the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. You see the destruction next to life going on, and it reminds you of what can happen—constant vigilance, and all."

"I'll think about it," said Harry, more to quiet Hermione than for any other reason. He wondered if he should ask what the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was, but decided against it. To cover for his confusion, he glanced at Fabian Prewett's watch. "How long have we been here, anyway?" Time had a way of dragging in Grimmauld Place.

"Long enough that we should check on George," said Ginny. She nodded at Ron. "You go, he's getting suspicious of me."

Ron obeyed, and Harry led Ginny and Hermione into what had once been Sirius' room, vaguely thinking that Ginny might be amused by the teenage Sirius' nerve in decorating his bedroom as he had. They stayed there for a while, as it was easily the most pleasant room in the house, but Ron did not return.

Inwardly irritated at himself for not doing more than a brief check that the house was secure when they'd first arrived, Harry drew his wand and moved toward the stairs that led to the attic. Ginny and Hermione, their wands also drawn, followed.

What they found was no cause for concern after all. Ron and George were seated atop small desks in an attic schoolroom that must have overseen the education of generations of young Blacks who could not be allowed to attend primary school with their inferiors. Another desk held a pile of immobilized pixies, as well as the remains of some other creatures Harry did not want to contemplate as ingredients in the latest product from Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes.

"…Making rude words appear on the blackboard behind the professor when he's facing the class, I don't know," Ron was saying.

"There might actually be a market for that. You need to smart with small things a first year can buy so they'll come back when they're older and have a few more galleons."

"How's it going?" Harry interrupted loudly as he and the girls drew closer to Ron and George. In the aftermath of Voldemort's downfall, it was important to allow your approach to be heard; a hex hurt just as much if it came from a startled friend as if it came from a surprised Death Eater.

"Ronniekins might have more of a head for mischief making than we ever gave him credit for," said George. Even though George automatically used the _we_ which Harry understood to encompass Fred, he seemed more relaxed and happy than Harry had seen him since before the Battle of Hogwarts.

Ron eagerly launched into a description of some of the new products George was considering for the store.

Harry half-listened as he looked around the schoolroom. Like the rest of the house, it had been overturned more than once and had otherwise fallen into disrepair. There were stacks of outdated textbooks both on and off the shelves; the walls and ceiling were covered with French and Latin phrases, most of them centering around the purity of blood, from what Harry could translate. One wall was covered with photographs of the Black children who had studied there.

Harry got to his feet to seek out the most recent of the photographs. He doubted that even up here anything had survived Mrs. Black's systematic purge of anything related to Sirius from her home, but he was rewarded when his eyes fell on the last photograph in the last row.

There were five children in the picture, and despite their almost inhuman solemnity, he recognized them all. The eldest was Bellatrix Lestrange, surely almost ready to leave for Hogwarts. Next to her was Narcissa Malfoy, the only pale face in a sea of darkness, and on Narcissa's other side was Andromeda Tonks, looking even more like Bellatrix than usual when they were both expressionless. Crouched in front of them were two small boys in whose babyish features Harry could make out, if he squinted, Sirius and Regulus.

He wondered for a moment if this was a Muggle photograph; he had rarely seen a magical photograph with so little movement. At last, he saw Andromeda blink; the five children were choosing not to move, as if they were in mourning, as if they _knew_ that they were the last of the Blacks. Regulus was little more than a baby, but seemed already sure that he would set himself a suicide mission and be the first to die. Sirius knew that his cousin would murder him; Bellatrix, too, was well aware that she would be cut down in battle. Narcissa and Andromeda, the survivors, looked sisterly behind the glass frame, but there was knowledge there, too. They were sisters who would never meet as adults, who would never see one another's children.

He was just reaching for the photograph to see if it could be removed from the wall when the wall itself seemed to shake. A familiar voice, speaking in a whisper that was somehow audible many floors above, asked "Severus Snape?"

"Oh no," whispered Hermione. "Someone's here, someone's set off Mad-Eye's curse."

"It might be nothing," Harry murmured, but he drew his wand once more and started down the stairs.

There was a loud rattling sound, and Mrs. Black's portrait awakened. _"Leave the house of my fathers, Mudlboods and blood traitors and goblins do not belong here!"_

"Goblins?" Harry and the others asked each other as one. They reached the last flight of stairs that led to the entrance hall. "George, Ginny, stay up here," Harry commanded. Ginny looked like she might protest, but Harry shook his head. "We may need an element of surprise, and you can aim curses anywhere down there from up here. Just don't hit us. Hermione, go right. Ron, left." Now he received nods of agreement from the others.

Harry moved quietly down the stairs and continued straight forward as he sensed Ron and Hermione fanning out to the sides. "Protego!" he shouted as soon as he saw movement before him. Hopefully a simple shield charm would protect him, but wouldn't rise the goblins' ire at having a wizard use a wand against them.

When he got a better view of the scene, though, Harry became aware that the shield charm was completely unnecessary. The goblins—for there were three—were tangled in a messy pile on the floor beneath Mrs. Black's portrait. A white, horrible figure was swooping over them, compressing them into a smaller, more contorted lump. It was difficult to determine which limbs belonged to which goblin.

In the time it took Harry to remove his shield charm, he realized that the white shape was the horrible, distorted figure of Albus Dumbledore. "They didn't kill you, Professor Dumbledore," Harry told it. The white shape evaporated into the stale air.

The goblins untangled themselves, managing to imbue a comical image with such menace that Harry considered re-casting the shield charm.

"Now," he asked the goblins, "why are you here? I didn't hear you knock, and I know goblins don't believe in thievery."

The leader of the three was very large for a goblin, nearly Ginny's height. He fixed Harry with a look of the utmost loathing. "You know many things, don't you, Harry Potter?" he asked. "You and your followers," he added with a narrow-eyed glance behind Harry, and he knew that Ron and Hermione had checked the rest of the floor and now stood behind him.

"A few things," Harry agreed. "But not, as I say, why you've come here."

The goblin sneered and threw a role of parchment at Harry's feet. "You have one week to turn yourself over to the Gringotts Council," he informed. "You've been warned, Harry Potter, and I never warn twice." With that, he and his fellows turned and left the house.

Harry reached for the parchment.

"Don't!" commanded Hermione, and she pointed her wand at it, muttering various chants very quickly.

"I doubt it has anything like a hex on it," Harry protested. "That doesn't seem like a goblin's style."

"How would someone who never once opened _A History of Magic_ know what a goblin's style is?"

"I opened it _once_," Harry defended himself. "When I first got Hedwig, I flipped through _A History of Magic_ until I found a name that seemed right for her."

Hermione looked at him with amusement from the corner of her eye. "My mistake," she said. "I think the parchment's all right, you can pick it up now."

Harry did so. Ron and Hermione peeked over his shoulders; when George and Ginny arrived, they looked, too.

_To Harry Potter:_

_You have violated the sanctity of Gringotts. You may hold that your action was "for the greater good," but the Gringotts Council does not. You will present yourself to the Gringotts Council for a proper punishment, or there will be retribution._

_Dordok_

Along with the note were several clippings from the _Daily Prophet_ which mentioned Harry, Ron, and Hermione's adventure at Gringotts in a rather flattering light.

"How come the goblins aren't after _us_?" Ron protested, sounding rather put-out.

"You want a letter like this?" Harry demanded, but Hermione raised her hand for silence.

"That's a good point, Ron, a really good point. If this was just about Gringotts being robbed, they would have warned all of us. It's not like they don't know we were there. We should talk to Bill about this, and we should let Kingsley know, too—and no, Harry, I'm not going to ask him what he thinks about the house before you know how you feel about it."

"All right, then," Harry agreed, both mollified and pleased that Hermione had responded to his objection before he voiced it.

They returned to the Burrow, intending to drop off George and Ginny before contacting the Ministry of Magic, but Kingsley arrived almost as they did.

"Have you had any threats from a goblin today?" Kingsley asked once he had greeted them. He had a deep, calming voice that made the possibility of a full-blown goblin rebellion sound like as curable a problem as an undone shoelace.

"How did you know that?" asked Harry, amazed, as he handed Kingsley the parchment.

"There was a notice of their intention sent to the Ministry, as well as to the _Daily Prophet_. I've only just seen it. When did you get this?"

Harry explained what had happened at Grimmauld Place, with the others chiming in as they felt necessary.

"You handled that well," Kinsley complimented. "While we're on the subject, Harry, do you plan to join the auror department this summer or are you going to take another year of school?"

Harry was startled. Everything he had said to Hermione earlier that day about wanting his NEWTs before becoming an auror was turned upside down. "I thought there were, well, strict requirements about becoming an auror. NEWTs and personality tests and everything."

Kingsley smiled. "I've administered those personality tests and I have a fair guess as to how you'd do. I've no objection to waiving the NEWT requirements in certain situations, and this is clearly one of those. That goes for either or both of you as well," he added to Ron and Hermione.

"May I think about it?" Harry asked.

"Of course." Again, he looked at Hermione and Ron. "You, too." His dark eyes returned to Harry. "I know I don't need to remind you to be careful in light of this threat. I don't think we're in danger of a real war because I don't think enough of the goblins are willing to get behind an uprising under the circumstances, not with you being held up as a beacon of tolerance for all magical beings. But an attack is an attack, whether it's a part of something larger or not."

That was something he'd learned long ago, Harry thought, as he mechanically voiced his agreement.

_To be continued._

_**Next chapter**__: There's no time like a wedding to discuss torture._

**Inordinately long response to comments from reviews (or: ongoing discussion of how close to canon I'm staying).**

**Please break up Harry and Ginny!**

_I don't think their romance is especially important to this story, but I do think the last book made it ridiculously clear that if they break up permanently, it's after they get married and have three children. I don't necessarily like JKR's romantic parings (in fact, I dislike most of them), but I'm keeping them all._

**Andromeda is a Slytherin/Ravenclaw!**

_As I said before, I went with Slytherin because of young Sirius' comment at the end of __Deathly Hallows__. He tells a disapproving young James that his "WHOLE family have been in Slytherin." A "favorite cousin" close in age and sharing a surname who was not in Slytherin would have warranted a mention here if she existed. Also, as some reviewers pointed out, Professor Slughorn tells Harry in __Half-Blood Prince__ that he had ALL the Blacks except Sirius in his house, and that he would have liked the set._

**You put Ted in Hufflepuff?**

_His daughter was a Hufflepuff, so I'm assuming she "got it" from somewhere. Also, from what little we see of Ted in canon, I think "I'll teach the lot, and treat them just the same," seems to suit him._

**Ted was a Muggle, completely non-magical.**

_I know the key to the Black Family Tree calls him a Muggle, but his daughter and Sirius both call him "Muggle-born" in __Order of the Phoenix__. While he's on the run in __Deathly Hallows__, he says he refused "to register as a Muggle-born on principle;" when Lee reports his murder, he doesn't identify him as a Muggle, although he does identify other Muggle victims as such. Finally, when Harry escapes Privet Drive, Ted tells him "I've fixed your ribs, your tooth, and your arm," which would seem to require magic beyond a bottle of SkeleGrow. _

**The Black Family Tree has a larger age gap between the cousins than what you're using.**

_True. I cheated there because this is more fun. I also tend to credit the books over the author's interviews/extras, and __Goblet of Fire__ has Sirius referencing being at school with Bellatrix. I don't know if the author has said that Sirius was not a credible narrator, but even if she has, I find it strange to raise interviews higher than the books. Are any of us reading or writing fan stories because the __**interviews**__ are so wonderful?_

**Sirius probably wouldn't have laughed at Andromeda.**

_He didn't. He laughed at the howlers themselves, his own in particular._

**Why wasn't Narcissa upset about the Sirius affair?**

_She knew that in the end it wouldn't affect her very much, and she isn't big on looking as if she's been upset by anything._

**Andromeda needs therapy.**

_No argument here. I would, too._

**Andromeda/Harry isn't handling this very well.**

_True for both of them._

**Does Andromeda know that Bellatrix killed Sirius?**

_Yes. I think that's probably common knowledge._

**Will Harry tell Andromeda what Regulus did against Voldemort?**

_Maybe, if they can manage to have a real conversation._

**Where's Remus' body?**

_That would be telling._


	8. Past Assurance

**The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf**

_**Summary**__: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-__Deathly Hallows __(SPOILERS!). _

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

The _Daily Prophet's_ owl unceremoniously dropped its burden onto Andromeda's windowsill and vanished without stopping. Andromeda had long since cancelled her subscription. She was not ready to forget that the _Daily Prophet_ had not felt the torture and murders of Muggle-borns worth reporting. The newspaper had been much too busy voicing its tacit approval of You-Know-Who's machinations to be bothered about such things as the death of her husband and hundreds of others. She was starting to listen to the Wizarding Wireless Network again; the addition of Lee Jordan, the former host of Potterwatch, to its team had set it back on the path to credibility. But the _Daily Prophet_ was still unwelcome in her home.

Apparently, she was not alone in her feelings, because the _Prophet_ had begun to distribute free editions to anyone it could find in the hopes of luring back its disgusted consumer base.

She opened the window and took the paper inside. Since she wouldn't be lining the pockets of the fools too cowardly to report the truth when it mattered, she would look at it.

It was no surprise to see Teddy's godfather on the front page. Apparently, Harry's life was in danger once again, this time from some of the goblins of Gringotts. It hardly counted as news, if it was true, since Harry's life had been in danger more often than not over the past several years. Andromeda had long been painfully aware of that, what with it having been Nymphadora's job to intervene until Harry was of age.

Her heart constricted familiarly. When Nymphadora had charged into battle for the last time, her decision had had nothing to do with Harry or protecting him. Still, Harry was the symbol of everything that had cost her her only child. The Death Eaters had tried more than once to get to Harry through Nymphadora. Within an hour of the Ministry's fall, Death Eaters had been at her door ready to torture her to get to Nymphadora to get to Harry.

She could handle the cruciatus curse. Ted had been able to handle it, too. But now there was a baby sleeping upstairs in Nymphadora's old room, a baby that anyone fascinated with Harry would know that he loved.

She had to find out whether there was any truth to the _Prophet's_ report.

To Harry's credit, he answered her summons almost instantly and cast an aggravated look at the newspaper when she tossed it in front of him. "Is there any truth to this?" she asked.

"They may have got it right this one time, yes," he told her.

"What are you doing about it?"

"Whatever Kingsley tells me to do," he answered in a way that implied that she ought to mind her own business.

"I only ask," she said tightly, "because it is common knowledge to your many enemies that the way to get to you is to go through the people who are close to you. If you continue to be a magnet for this kind of danger, it might be in Teddy's interests to be distanced from you."

His green eyes hardened in a way that, even to one who did not know him well, seemed unusual. "So that's how you're going to do it."

"Do what?" She was staring hard at him now, her usual attempts at politeness pushed aside as useless.

"Try to keep me away from Teddy. You've been trying all along. You never let me near him for more than a few minutes, and you aren't very happy about letting me have those either."

"He's a baby who just lost his parents. He needs—"

"I've been a baby whose parents were murdered by Voldemort. I know loads of people who lost their parents. And I'm not going to let you shove Teddy into some cupboard and tell him every day that he's a failure who isn't as good as his dead parents!"

It was possibly the most insulting thing anyone had said to Andromeda in her life, and that included her family's reaction when they realized she had eloped with Ted and was pregnant with his baby. Luckily, being groundlessly insulted had a calming effect on her. It always had. "What do you intend to do, Mr. Potter?" she asked coolly. "I heard you telling Teddy that you would take him where no one would ever find him, which may take more magic than even you possess, considering you aren't certain how to pick him up, let alone feed him or keep him healthy. But you're going to manage to learn while you're on the run from a pack of goblins out for your blood?"

"I will if I have to."

Andromeda drew her wand, but did not point it. "I understand that you and my cousin Sirius were once rather fixated on each other. You must have learned something about the family I was born to. Please consider whether you want to risk the possibility of my having learned a thing or two from them before you attempt to take my grandson away from me. Leave my house, Mr. Potter."

Harry left.

Andromeda began to clean her already compulsively neat kitchen to keep herself from dwelling on the fact that she had just used the Black name as a threat for the first time in her life. Even when she had been a member of the Black family in good standing, she had been more oppressed than oppressor.

X

Andromeda leaned backward into Ted's arms and closed her eyes against the yellow brightness of the room, so different from the cool, dark Slytherin rooms. She could never have been a Hufflepuff; she could never have been so unabashedly cheery all the time, no matter what the state of the world. And, unfortunately, the current state of the world included today being the very last day of the term. Tomorrow, the carriages drawn by invisible horses would deposit hundreds of Hogwarts students at the Hogsmeade train station, and from there they would catch the Hogwarts Express to London.

She wouldn't even be able to spend the trip to London with Ted's arms around her; no, she would have to sit with Bellatrix and Narcissa and go over last minute plans for Bellatrix's wedding to Rodolphus Lestrange, which would occur the following Sunday.

She sighed. Even without the added complications of Bellatrix's wedding, she could not have taken Ted's hand and marched onto the Hogwarts Express with him like all the other girlfriends did with all the other boyfriends.

"What's wrong, 'Dromeda?" Ted asked against her neck in his usual mellow voice.

She didn't open her eyes or turn toward him. "Does it bother you that no one knows about us?"

He chuckled. "Andromeda, half of Hufflepuff House knows about us. My roommates are all taking their time over dessert tonight and telling anyone who asks that I'm feeling a bit off so we can have time to say goodbye alone up here."

"You're sure they won't tell anyone what you're really—"

"'You might belong in Hufflepuff, where they are just and loyal,'" he quoted. "They're good blokes, they won't tell."

"Does that bother you?" she repeated.

"Bother me that my friends keep a secret when I ask them? No, I like that."

She didn't laugh. "That wasn't what I meant. Does it bother you to ask them? Do you ever think that my friends should know about us? Are you offended that I haven't asked you to be my date to my sister's wedding next weekend?"

"You told me that if your family found out about us, they'd do everything in their power to make sure we never saw each other again."

"That's true," she said, more pleadingly than a Black should ever say anything. "If we showed up at that wedding together, they'd slice us into pieces and serve us with the cake. Then they'd stitch me back together and ship me off to Durmstrang for my last year of school, unless they pulled me out entirely and had me sit in the attic of Grimmauld Place with a tutor again, like when I was a baby."

"Then it doesn't bother me that none of the snakes know. The only thing about it that bothers me is that it bothers you."

She turned her head to kiss his shoulder through his school robes. "I miss you."

"I'm right here."

"Tomorrow, you won't be."

"Don't think about that."

_Don't think about that_ became her constant refrain over the next several days. She didn't think about Bellatrix's wedding because it encompassed a weekend of events that disgusted her. She didn't think about Ted because it hurt too much that he wasn't there.

Andromeda's mother shook her awake viciously before sunrise on Saturday. The awakening, while not unexpected, interrupted a particularly intriguing dream about Ted, and she blushed while she hastily dressed herself amidst her mother's shouts to attend to Bellatrix and give her anything she wanted (not that Bellatrix getting anything she wanted was an unusual state of affairs).

Narcissa and Bellatrix were already clad in formal, high-necked dress robes in their father's "office" when Andromeda arrived.

"Fix Anna's makeup, Cissy," Bellatrix commanded regally, and Narcissa obeyed without comment. Andromeda allowed her younger sister to fuss with her eye shadow and lip liner; she was good at applying makeup, but Narcissa was better.

"When are the Lestranges coming for the inspection?" Andromeda asked with a sick feeling in her stomach.

"Hopefully not until I've fixed your hair, too," said Narcissa.

"Ten minutes, fifteen," Bellatrix clarified. "Father said he would try to give us a two-minute warning."

Andromeda and her sisters had seen more of their father in the past several days than they had seen of him in the previous fifteen, seventeen, and eighteen years. Bellatrix was about to secure a respectable pureblood marriage with a respectable pureblood family, as she had been born to do. That was cause for pride and celebration, not least because the older Bellatrix grew, the harder it became for their parents to ignore what looked suspiciously like a descent into madness. Bellatrix was beautiful and brilliant, but that was worth nothing if she went the route of Aunt Walburga before she was favorably matched.

With a jolt, Andromeda remembered that it had been Bellatrix who had first put a name to Aunt Walburga's strange behavior many years before:

"_They say… mental instability runs in the family. They're just jealous, mind, but that's what they say."_

"_You said yourself that Aunt Walburga went completely unhinged."_

"_Oh, she's mad."_

"Done," said Narcissa, waving her wand over Andromeda's head with a flourish. "Now there's no way you'll spoil Bella's chances to marry the love of her life."

Bellatrix laughed a little too loudly. "Love of my life? Hardly. But he'll do."

"I don't know why you chose Rodolphus," Narcissa mused. "There are hundreds of men you could have had. Older, richer, more intelligent."

"The last thing I want is an intelligent man," said Bellatrix with a brutal honesty that was almost admirable. "I'll marry a pureblood because it's my duty, but it will be one who'll stay out of my way."

Neither Narcissa nor Andromeda needed to ask what Bellatrix's "way" would be, which was just as well, because Cygnus Black chose that moment to enter with Rabastan, Rodolphus, Rhydian, and Roderick Lestrange. Andromeda and her sisters had known all of the Lestrange men since birth; no introductions were needed.

The men's collective gaze fell first upon Narcissa, and then upon Andromeda. Not a word was spoken until they reached Bellatrix, who remained uncommonly still. Even then, Rhydian, the Lestrange patriarch and the uncle of Bellatrix's bridegroom, was the only one to speak.

"You have made beautiful daughters, Cygnus."

"Thank you."

Lasciviously, he raked his eyes once more up and down Bellatrix's figure, though it was difficult to leer at a woman wearing formal robes. Bellatrix's curves, like Andromeda's and Narcissa's, were perfect, but the high-necked, old-fashioned style of dress did little to accentuate them.

"She is intact?"

All at once, Andromeda understood why she and her sisters had been displayed at so many formal occasions throughout their short lives. Without years of practice, she would never have been able to hear such a question posed without laughing, or at least wondering aloud how a father was supposed to know such a thing.

Of course, it was entirely possible that Bellatrix _was_, as Rhydian put it, _intact_— Andromeda had never seen any sign that Rodolphus was one of her sister's many passions. Bellatrix was more aroused by Unforgivable Curses than by slightly dim, rather plain schoolboys.

"She is."

"You, girl!" Rhydian addressed Andromeda now. Andromeda didn't stiffen, or react. She had been taught well. "What say you to your sister's match with my nephew?"

"I only regret that I shall never make as fine a match myself, for such has been the only wish of my heart since birth," she replied evenly, and then tried to cast a nonverbal spell on herself to get the foul taste of her words out of her mouth.

"Your sister can't say better than that," Rhydian told Bellatrix. He looked straight into her dark eyes, for the first time seeming to care whether there was anything there. "I am convinced. I have a special gift for you."

"For me, my lord?" asked Bellatrix.

"For my new niece, and my nephew," Rhydian agreed with an unpleasant smile. "A most necessary gift, much as we all wish it were not. You must come to London with me; you may bring your sisters for the sake of propriety."

"Brother, surely you could have brought the gift to the bride's home the day before she is to be married," suggested Roderick in a strange voice.

Rhydian looked at Roderick as if he were rat entrails left rotting in the sun. Rhydian might favor his nephew Rodolphus, especially now that Rodolphus was marrying such a fine pureblood specimen as Bellatrix, but he had no patience for Rodolphus' father. "She and her sisters shall come to London with her bridegroom and me. You and Rabastan may do as you like."

Roderick looked both ill and hurt, but Rhydian paid him no more mind. "Come, Rodolphus, and bring your young women," he decreed.

They traveled to Diagon Alley by Floo Powder. Bellatrix and Rodolphus could both Apparate legally, but it would not do for Bellatrix to be separated from her underage entourage the day before her wedding. As soon as they emerged from the fireplace, Rhydian marched them purposefully toward Gringotts. Beside Andromeda, Bellatrix's breath quickened. She seemed to have some idea of what her present would be, and the prospect of it clearly excited her far more than the prospect of marriage did.

The five of them and a goblin journeyed into the deepest bowels of Gringotts in an atmosphere of mutual disgust. Andromeda had never been so far beneath the bank; her family was an old family, with many valuable objects to store, but even they did not possess one of these most coveted vaults. Andromeda couldn't help but be curious as to what exactly must be given to Bellatrix as soon as it was removed from its hiding place.

The goblin made the vault open itself, and Andromeda raised her eyebrows as she saw—nothing. The vault was empty, unless its contents were bewitched to hide from her prying eyes.

"Imperio!" Rhydian commanded suddenly. The goblin lay himself flat on the floor of their cart and hid his eyes. Rhydian conjured a blanket from thin air and bewitched it so that it would block all sound; this was tossed over the prone goblin. "I'll erase his memory as well, Miss Bellatrix, just in case something gets through."

Bellatrix nodded.

"I left Hogwarts about thirty years ago, but while I was there I had a most remarkable classmate. I was honored to call him 'friend.' I believe you have met him."

"Yes," agreed both Bellatrix and Rodolphus. Bellatrix's eyes were round with emotion; her breathing quickened once more.

"He suggested to me that you might find uses for a vault like this one; there are so very few in existence. I was only too happy to accept his suggestion. My brother believes that as the next eldest male in the Lestrange line, the vault should be his. Because he has chosen to be so uncooperative, I must unfortunately exclude my nephew from what I will do next."

Rodolphus nodded, resignedly accepting a sad lot in life, while knowing it was for the best.

"Our long-fingered friends take many precautions to protect our wealth, but we must never leave everything to them. We use the oldest, most powerful magic at out disposal—the magic of blood!"

With that, Rhydian withdrew a dagger from beneath his light traveling cloak and sliced a neat line down his palm. He held his bleeding hand to the open door of the vault while mumbling a chant under his breath.

When he raised his voice again, it was to address Bellatrix. "Miss Bellatrix, the vault will be in your name and that of your husband. But should you ever need to take… unusual measures, it must be you who takes them, for it will recognize you." The dagger disappeared from Rhydian's cloak and appeared in Bellatrix's hand. Reverently, eagerly, she cut her own palm and placed her hand near Rhydian's. She added her own voice to his chant when he began again.

"Now it will know only a new family, and will not respond to my brother should he become difficult. Perhaps, for absolute safety, we shall use your sisters?"

"Cissy will suffice," said Bellatrix quickly. Far from being offended, Andromeda was delighted that Bellatrix wanted her left out of this.

Rhydian eyed Narcissa and Andromeda shrewdly. "If both are used, both must betray you."

"That's not what I'm afraid of," Bellatrix snapped. "All right, both of them."

Narcissa and Andromeda were not permitted to cut themselves; Rhydian did it for them, and pressed his hand over theirs as they touched the door.

"But as your sister rightly suggests," Rhydian said when their cuts were healed, "Little can be left to chance." Bellatrix nodded, and performed what Andromeda, who had a particular aptitude for charms, knew was the Secret-Keeper spell. Neither she nor Narcissa would be able to speak of what they'd done for as long as Bellatrix lived. This mattered little to Andromeda, as she had no idea to what end the blood spell had been cast.

She dwelled little on the blood spell at the lavish ceremony the next day; her mind returned to Ted. As she stood and watched Bellatrix swear her eternal love to a man to whom she was clearly indifferent, Andromeda felt the rush of shame that became more familiar with each passing year. Andromeda loved Ted. She wanted to make those promises to him, and she knew that, unlike Bellatrix, she would mean them. But she told no one how she felt, so intent on waiting for the right moment was she. It was disgusting.

Amidst the celebration at the reception, she saw only one person who looked as miserable as she felt. She approached him from behind, and when she reached up to tap his shoulder—how odd it seemed that he was taller than she was now—he whirled on her with a most unpleasant expression on his face.

"Oh, it's you," said Sirius after a moment. He offered no apology for the glare; even the misfit Blacks didn't apologize often, or well. But he did lead her away from the crowd and help her to sit on the steps near a perfectly manicured flowerbed without destroying her ludicrously complicated dress robes. Once they were seated, he made a bottle of mead and two glasses appear. Andromeda accepted hers gratefully and relished the feeling of mead flowing through her veins. Sirius had excellent taste in alcohol for a fourteen-year-old boy. He swallowed his share like a seasoned drinker. Andromeda didn't feel the need to comment on this; if Sirius was drinking a little too much, he was still the least problematic member of her family.

As if to confirm her thought, her father chose that moment to wander in their direction, loudly telling a joke about the use of the cruciatus curse on "mudbloods." His audience, including both Uncle Orion and Rhydian Lestrange, burst into raucous laughter.

Sirius made a face and took another drink. "Disgusting. Their pureblood mania, not the mead."

"The mead's about the only good thing about today," Andromeda agreed, feeling uncharacteristically blunt.

"So we won't be having another one of these for you next year, when you finish school and make a respectable pureblood marriage?"

Andromeda shook her head; the mead swirled pleasantly inside her. "The kind of marriage I'm going to have—" She stopped herself just in time and looked around. Her father and his admirers had drifted away again. With difficulty, she withdrew her wand from the intricate folds of her robes and cast an anti-eavesdropping spell on the area around them. Sirius sat up straight with new interest.

"I think the spell worked," he whispered.

Andromeda's heart sped up. "There are at least two hundred people here, and the only one who would ever approve of the kind of marriage I want is you. I may not get exactly what I want, but I will _not_ marry the nearest pureblood of my father's choosing."

"What is it that you want?"

"This stays between you and me."

Sirius nodded eagerly. "Want an Unbreakable Vow?" he offered.

"I don't think that's necessary. Do you know Ted Tonks? He's my year, but in Hufflepuff."

Sirius wrinkled his brow in thought. "Prefect? Big bloke, blond hair?"

"That's him."

"I like him. Let James and me off when he caught us—well, never mind."

Andromeda let it pass, deciding that she didn't want to know anyway. "We've been together for almost two years. I love him."

"They might let you marry a Hufflepuff," Sirius mused.

"He's Muggle-born."

Sirius' gray eyes widened as this news sunk in. "Oh. No wonder it's a secret. They'll blast you off the family tree faster than you can say 'bonded for life.'"

"I know," said Andromeda. "I don't care." It was a relief to say it out loud to someone other than Ted, and especially to say it to someone who knew exactly what marrying against the Black family's wishes would entail. Now when Ted casually mentioned that half of his housemates knew about their "secret" relationship, she could at least think _and __**my**__ cousin knows, too._

"You're too good for them," said Sirius fiercely. "Better than the whole lot put together."

X

Andromeda was jerked out of her reverie by Sirius' unexpected appearance in her memory. The sick feeling in her stomach returned as she remembered her thinly veiled threat to Sirius' beloved godson, who was now godfather to the only living thing in the world who mattered to her.

But Harry had threatened, too, and Harry seemed determined to put Teddy in danger. Perhaps that was why Sirius had been so fond of Harry; Sirius had been known to be reckless, too. Still, Andromeda had always credited her favorite cousin with better taste.

There was a knock on the door. She knew it was Harry before she called for him to enter. She rested her hand on her wand just in case.

Harry placed himself before her, head high but face gentler.

"I'm sorry for the interruption, Mrs. Tonks. I wanted to make sure you knew that what I told Teddy wasn't that I was going to take him away, it was that I would take him away if anything—if anything ever happened. When my parents died I went to relatives who didn't want me, and they did keep me in a closet. One of my friends went to relatives who wanted him, but they made him feel guilty for most of his life because he couldn't replace what they lost. I know that isn't you, and I know that you're trying to keep Teddy from getting hurt, which I respect."

He looked her in the eye, and Andromeda saw something there that she'd never seen in their earlier meetings.

Sirius' taste had been impeccable after all.

"Thank you for listening, Mrs. Tonks. I'll be going now."

"Wait!" Harry looked at her again. "Please call me Andromeda, Harry."

_To be continued._

_**Next chapter**__: Harry finds he's lost two things. One bothers him, and it's not the one he would prefer. _

**Response to comments from reviews:**

**Why did Gin want to look impish?**

_Because it's better than looking crushed because someone just said your recently-dead brother's name, especially when you know your boyfriend (after whom you've been pining since the age of ten) doesn't do well with crying girls. That was an awkward sentence, though, so I may edit it out. _

**Harry can translate French and Latin?**

_Considering all the French and Latin phrases he's learned as a part of his magical education, I'm guessing he can decode a line here and there, especially if he starts out more or less knowing what it says anyway._

**Tonks' house was never stated.**

_It isn't in the books. The FAQ section of JK Rowling's website places her in Hufflepuff. _


	9. Present Loss

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

_This chapter contains one direct quote from __Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix__ and one direct quote from __Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.__ I'm pretty sure anyone reading Potterfic will know 'em when they see 'em._

* * *

"You mean Tonks' mum actually likes you now?" asked Ron as they approached the makeshift Quidditch pitch. Harry had expected Ginny to come with him, and was surprised, but pleased, that Ron and Hermione had decided to join them as well.

"I wouldn't say _likes_," said Harry. "She just stopped glaring at me. And she let me spend more than five minutes with Teddy, and she's telling me all kinds of stuff about how you take care of babies and what they're supposed to learn when, and all the things you have to watch out for with a Metamorphmagus."

"And how did you do it again?"

"Apologized for something that wasn't my fault." He lowered his voice so that Hermione and Ginny wouldn't hear. "Women are weird."

"_Boys_," muttered Hermione to Ginny, and Ginny giggled. It seemed that they had heard after all.

"Why don't you explain why she likes him all of a sudden then, hmm?" Ron asked Hermione, playfully squeezing her hand.

"Ron," said Hermione in the lecturing voice that had long since become more endearing than annoying, "she never _didn't_ like Harry. She lost her daughter and her husband in the last six months. Teddy is all she has, and she's terrified something's going to happen to him, too. I don't think she was even registering Harry as a person, just as something that might put Teddy in danger. Then when Harry told her what he was actually thinking, instead of just playing mind games with her, she saw that the last thing he'd want to do is hurt Teddy."

Ron shook his head dubiously. Hermione looked amused rather than aggravated as she once would have.

"What made you do that, Harry?" she asked.

"Some kind of weird instinct," said Harry, who had been wondering this himself. He was used to getting good results when he followed his instincts about things like Quidditch and Dark Magic. Getting good results when he followed his instincts about a witch—even a grandmother witch—was something new. "But listen, there's something more important I've been wanting to talk to you about." Hermione and Ron were blissfully happy with one another, and Hermione even seemed impressed with the way he had handled the situation with Andromeda. He wouldn't get a better opportunity.

"Something with the goblins?" Ginny guessed.

"No. It's about Remus. They still haven't, well, they still haven't found his body," he said, somewhat apologetically. A horrible image of Fred's body decaying in the church graveyard hit him like a bludger to the stomach, and he hoped that Ron and Ginny hadn't had the same feeling.

"It's awful, Harry, but the Ministry does have a lot of things to do, trying to rebuild," Hermione defended.

"I know. I'm not blaming the Ministry—not for this." He glanced automatically at his hand, where the words _I must not tell lies_ would shine for the rest of his life. "I think the Ministry could use a little help, or Remus could. If he's dead—"

"_If_?" interrupted Ginny severely.

Ron rolled his eyes in Hermione's direction as she squeezed his hand and sighed. "It took him longer than I thought it would."

"Longer than I thought as well," agreed Hermione. "I was beginning to think we were wrong. It's nice to know some things are always predictable."

"What things are predictable?" Harry demanded.

"When someone dies and there isn't a body, you start denying they're dead. You did it with Mad-Eye, you did it with Sirius—"

"I never said anything like that about Sirius!" Harry snapped, in part because he was annoyed that Hermione was right.

"You didn't have to, mate," said Ron with some sympathy.

"Even with Dumbledore," Hermione continued. "You saw the body, you saw him die, but when his brother picked up that mirror—"

"Their eyes look exactly the same!"

Hermione didn't respond to this point, which Harry took to be a particularly valid one, but rather than force the matter he decided to change tactics. He didn't want Ron and Hermione to adopt a policy of feigning deafness, as they sometimes did when he was right and they didn't believe him.

"Fine," said Harry. "He's dead." The words tasted like a betrayal in his mouth, but he forged ahead. "I would like to find his body and bury it properly, if possible. Is that all right with everyone? You don't have to help if you think it's feeding my delusions."

"_I'll_ help," said Ginny quickly. "And I don't think you're delusional." Harry took this vote of confidence with a grain of salt, because Ginny sounded rather like Ron did when he pretended to agree with Hermione because they'd just had a row.

"Of course we'll help, Harry," said Hermione, looking slightly sick. Hermione did not deal well with corpses.

Ron agreed, too, just as they reached the cluster of players standing beside the "pitch," which was little more than a field. The goal posts were represented by magical rings of smoke, and glowing spots on the ground marked out-of-bounds. Oliver Wood noticed them first and beckoned them over. He hastily introduced Harry to the players he had not already met.

"We're one Chaser short," Wood said, and his eyes fell hungrily on Ginny. "I hear Chaser is your position."

"It is," said Ginny simply.

"Up for playing today?"

"Always."

Wood looked for a moment like he might kiss Ginny, which awakened the jealousy that had taunted Harry for most of the last two years.

"I thought you were a Seeker," said a witch who was one of Wood's teammates on Puddlemere United.

"Only when Harry got himself suspended," said Ginny cheerily. "Granted, that was more often than not my fourth and fifth year. Then last year, Snape wouldn't let the Gryffindor team play at all, and suspended all the best Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw players."

"Sounds like him," said Wood. Then he handed brightly colored armbands to Harry and Ginny. "These will let you know what the score is," he told them. "There are Muggle-repelling charms all over, but we don't want to risk having someone commentate so everyone can hear. More of a problem than it's worth if something goes wrong. But if Harry does one of his thirty second catches, it won't matter anyway."

"This is just practice, isn't it?" Harry asked. "If someone catches it in thirty seconds, won't we let it go again?"

Wood glowered at Harry, and Harry instantly felt that he was once again twelve years old. "This may not be official, but it's serious," he growled.

Harry nodded, and the butterflies that had been his constant pre-game companions when Wood had last been his Quidditch captain took up residence in his stomach. "Right. Serious," he agreed.

Wood proceeded to give Harry and Ginny a great many instructions, and indeed only stopped because the captain of the other team insisted. Wood shook the other captain's hand. Then fourteen players flew into the air as one; Ron released the balls from their case.

Harry was temporarily overwhelmed by the sheer joy of flying, as he had been when he and George had taken off from Diagon Alley the week before. "LOOK FOR THE SNITCH, POTTER!" Wood bellowed behind him, and Harry wondered how Wood had known that he hadn't been looking properly.

He wove in and out around teammates, opponents, and bludgers. He flew high to see the game unfold from above, and then low enough to see Ron and Hermione sprawled on the grass. They had other observers, too, Harry noticed; about twenty witches and wizards were watching the makeshift match, many through goggles that appeared to carry magnifying charms.

As he swooped upward again, keeping his eyes peeled for the tiniest glimmer of gold, Ginny scored the first goal of the match. He added his shout to Ron's, Hermione's, Wood's, and their other teammates' as Ginny sped back toward the center of the pitch, her hair a streak of red across the sky.

Though the day was clear and bright, it seemed a long time before Harry caught a glimpse of gold hovering at the other end of the pitch, well below most of the other players. He leaned over his broom and urged it forward.

As soon as he began to gain speed, the other team's Seeker caught sight of the Snitch as well. The other Seeker rode a Firebolt, too, which robbed Harry of one of his usual advantages; he had almost always had a better broom than his rivals when he'd played at Hogwarts. They plunged downward as one, shoulder to shoulder. It seemed completely up to chance who would catch the Snitch first. Harry thought his fingertips had just grazed it when the opposing Seeker collided with him, hard, and caused him to lose his balance. He righted himself almost instantly, but the Snitch was gone.

He was close enough to the ground to hear the disappointed groans of the crowd, which now numbered closer to one hundred than twenty. A few voices, though, were not disappointed at all. "Told you Potter wouldn't do it," said one, louder than could possibly have been necessary. "Flew against him at school, and his own Keeper hit him in the head with a bludger just to get rid of him."

It was, Harry noticed with disgust, Zacharias Smith, a member of Hufflepuff House who had never much liked Harry. But, worse than Smith, he saw a tiny pink bow atop a toadlike head. "Umbridge," he hissed, and the scar on his hand throbbed with remembered pain.

Ginny was suddenly beside him, flushed and panting. Like Harry, she hadn't flown much recently. "I know," she said, as disgusted as he was. "Get back to Seeking."

Harry tried to channel his anger into his search for the Snitch. The search remained fruitless as each team scored three times. None of the goals for Harry's team were Ginny's, but she assisted nicely on one of them. He felt a surge of pride that she was flying so well when almost everyone else on the Pitch was a professional. Still, the outcome of a match was rarely determined by Chasers. The Snitch was worth 150 points, and he had to find it.

But each time his eyes sought the Snitch, they instead fastened on the tiny dot below that he knew to be Umbridge. He was sure that he could see the ridiculous velvet bow even from the other side of the Pitch.

Flying had once had a way of clearing his mind, but now his mind, temporarily cleared, wandered back to Remus.

"_You should hear Remus talk about her."_

"_Does Lupin know her?"_

"_No, but she drafted a bit of anti-werewolf legislation two years ago that makes it almost impossible for him to get a job."_

"_What's she got against werewolves?"_

"_Scared of them, I expect."_

If there was anyone who would want to take some kind of revenge on Remus, it was Umbridge. Harry had heard from Mr. Weasley that she was under investigation for crimes against Muggles and Muggle-borns; with Kingsley as Minister of Magic, she was certain to be punished. She had nothing to lose while awaiting her fate, she could afford to take risks, she'd be locked up in any case…

And then everyone was shouting, and even though the Snitch was closer to Harry than to the other Seeker, he didn't turn quickly enough. The other Seeker was taking a victory lap as his teammates hugged him and the crowd applauded.

Harry, Ginny, Wood, and their teammates drifted slowly and unenthusiastically to the ground. Ron and Hermione walked out to greet them, muttering consoling words, but Ginny ignored them. She leapt from her broom when it was at least eight feet above the ground and stormed in the direction of Zacharias Smith. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all gave chase; they knew exactly what happened every time Ginny got near Zacharias.

Ginny had an insurmountable head start. By the time the other three reached her side, Zacharias' face was covered in wildly flapping bat bogeys.

"Ginny, you're still underage!" Hermione reprimanded.

Ginny looked singularly unimpressed. "If they throw me in Azkaban, it'll be worth it. But they won't—I'll just say it was self-defense, that my head would have exploded if I hadn't done it."

Harry stifled a laugh. Ginny grinned; Hermione glared. "You can't hex him every time you see him," Hermione tried again.

"I'm pretty sure I can, actually," said Ginny. "The first time I got off a really good one on him was the beginning of fifth year—it was so great Professor Slughorn invited me to join the Slug Club instead of giving me detention."

"Slug Club might've been worse than detention," said Harry conversationally, and this time Hermione's glare was so severe that he decided to let Ginny and Hermione sort the balance of this out themselves. Besides, he had more important things on his mind, like figuring out what Umbridge was doing watching a Quidditch match.

Not for the first time, he wished that he could perform a disillusionment charm powerful enough to make himself completely invisible. He hadn't wanted to fly with his Invisibility Cloak, and had instead left it with Hermione, so that was not an option, either. He had to settle for making himself as inconspicuous as possible while slinking in behind a group of teenagers seeking autographs from some of the professional players.

Unfortunately, "inconspicuous" was no longer remotely possible for Harry. Soon, people were swarming around him, too. Umbridge gave him a sickly sweet smile that made him think he might become ill on the spot. Then Umbridge vanished with a pop. She had Disapparated.

Mumbling apologies about being in a bit of a rush, he fought his way through the small cluster of players and supporters back to Ron, Hermione, and Ginny.

"We have to go. Now," he told them, and then felt guilty for the panic that immediately washed over Ron and Hermione's faces. For the past year, _we have to go now_ had meant that they were in imminent danger of losing their lives. "Didn't George say he was opening the store today? Shouldn't we go and see him?" he added, and they relaxed.

"Good idea," said Ron, too enthusiastically, and Harry registered that Hermione and Ginny had not stopped arguing during his unsuccessful attempt to spy on Umbridge.

"Take Ginny's hand, Harry," said Hermione rather coolly. "She's not old enough to Apparate legally."

Ginny rolled her eyes skyward. "Well, if you don't _want_ to hold my hand," Harry whispered to her, and she smiled brilliantly and reached for him.

Since Hermione hadn't mentioned that neither Harry nor Ron had yet taken a formal Apparition test, either, Harry didn't bother to remind her. Instead, he concentrated with all his might on Diagon Alley.

X

George had made no formal announcement that Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes would reopen that day—in fact Harry rather suspected that George had spontaneously chosen to reopen in order to avoid his mother's hints that he ought to accompany the others to the Quidditch match—but there was a respectable amount of traffic in and out of the store.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny wandered in as half a dozen very giggly girls walked out. "I see he's selling love potions again," said Hermione.

"Might be those romantic daydream things," Ron suggested. "He was working on those yesterday, even showed me a bit about how they work. It's not as complicated as I thought, it's really clever."

At the moment, Harry didn't care about prepackaged daydreams or love potions. In fact, he _never_ cared about prepackaged daydreams or love potions unless someone tried to slip him one without his knowledge. "Never mind that," he told the others. "Umbridge was at the match today."

Hermione shuddered. "We know. Horrible woman."

"Did you go over and listen in on her while the match was going on? Did you see her do anything?"

"She'll be in Azkaban before the summer's over. The Ministry has a Trace on her until her trial is over so she can't go where they won't find her." Ron said. "What's the point?"

"The point is, she knows how her trial will turn out just like we do. She has nothing to lose. If she wants to go around, you know, desecrating bodies—"

"Harry!" Hermione turned slightly green.

"Well, what do you want me to call it? If anyone would do it, she would."

"Even if she would, the Ministry would find out because of the Trace. I know we're all used to the Ministry being completely corrupt and useless, but that isn't how it is anymore. You don't have to do this kind of thing by yourself now, sneaking around and checking up on people."

"I don't have to, I want to. And if you don't want to—"

"We said we'd help you with Remus. I just don't think we should get carried away with Umbridge just because you don't like her."

"_I_ don't like her?"

"Just because none of us like her, then. Kingsley's going to take care of her, and you don't have to this time. Didn't you always say you wanted to be more normal? Now you can be."

Harry couldn't think of any way to respond to that, and so he busied himself looking at trick wands until George spotted them and hurried over. "Did you see the newest products?" he asked. "We worked on these the whole time we were shut up in Auntie Muriel's. At first it was a substitute until we could breed more pygmy puffs, but there might be a separate market. Get around a no-pets rule, and all. They're not technically alive."

George thrust a small, furry rabbit-like animal into Harry's hand. It was warm, and it felt almost as if it had a beating heart and breathing lungs. But as it moved in his hands, he could tell that it was no more than a toy bewitched to behave as if it was real; presumably the magic was similar to that used to make the suits of armor at Hogwarts move. He couldn't help smiling as it nuzzled him in an affectionate way, although he thought he would much prefer a real pet.

"Nice, isn't it? I'm not sure how long the magic will last, when it goes it'll just be an ordinary toy rabbit. Here's the other." George exchanged the rabbit for a small snake which slithered convincingly in Harry's hands.

"I guess you have to have something to sell the Slytherins."

"Something they can't use to attack everybody else in the school, yeah," agreed George with a hint of bitterness. More than a year before, Draco Malfoy had used the twins' instant-darkness powder to help a large group of Death Eaters sneak into the castle. Bill Weasley had been permanently disfigured in the ensuing battle.

"Hi, snake. How are you doing today?" Harry asked the toy as it wrapped itself around his wrist.

The toy ignored him.

"Try Parseltongue," suggested Ron interestedly.

Harry sometimes had trouble telling whether he was speaking English or Parseltongue. He had half-believed that he had already been speaking Parseltongue. Still, he looked hard at the snake and tried again.

Ron shook his head. "English."

Harry gathered his concentration, thinking of the rare times he had heard the language spoken. "Hissy, hissy, little snakey, slither on the floor. You be good to Morfin, or he'll nail you to the door."

"What?" Ginny burst into giggles.

"I heard Voldemort's uncle sing that to a snake once in a memory Dumbledore showed me," Harry told her. "Other than Voldemort, that's really the only time I've heard someone who isn't me speaking it. And it sounds like English to me when I do speak it."

"But you aren't—oh." Ginny's giggles quieted, and she gave Harry the almost-pitying look of someone who thought that she knew something he did not.

"What?"

"Well, when You-Know-Who stopped possessing me—not that he really possessed you, but you had that connection—I stopped being able to speak Parseltongue, too."

Harry quickly thrust the non-snake back into George's hands. A sinking feeling in his stomach told him that even without knowing the whole story, Ginny had got it right. He didn't have a bit of Voldemort's soul attached to his own any longer; of course he couldn't speak Parseltongue. It didn't matter, really. He'd been almost eleven before he'd realized he could talk to snakes, and the ability had made him an outcast at school for a large part of his second year. He certainly wanted his soul and his mind to be his own, rather than shared with a sociopathic Dark wizard.

But… he remembered how many times over the past few years he had been accused of secretly enjoying his connection to Voldemort. And at those moments he had been perfectly honest with himself, he'd been able to admit, silently, that it was true. Now that secret enjoyment was gone along with the more important things lost on the war: Remus and Tonks and Fred and Dobby and Hedwig and Mad-Eye and Dumbledore and—

He stopped himself. "Any other new products that don't remind me that a crazed killer used to share my mind sometimes?" he asked as lightly as he could.

"No, but there's one thing you should see that probably will remind you," said Ron. He pointed to a display near the door that was remarkably sedate in comparison with the bright colors and loud noises that dominated the rest of the shop. It wasn't surprising that Harry hadn't noticed it when they'd come in.

Harry moved closer to the display and picked up one of the neat, black boxes. _Potterwatch: The Complete Broadcasts_ was emblazoned across the top in gold writing. On the back of the box was a list of original broadcast airdates. Most of them Harry had never heard, not having realized that Lee Jordan's illegal radio program existed until two months before the final fall of Voldemort. "Lee's coming in to sign them for the store's official re-opening," Ron announced. "That part was my idea."

"How much?" Harry asked George.

George shook his head. "You don't pay here, especially not for that." He grabbed one of the enchanted fake rabbits that had hopped across the floor after them and tossed it at Harry, who caught it easily. "And that's for your godson."

They spent a pleasant hour closely examining the rest of George's wares. Harry had seen them all before, and had laughed at them all. Today, though, each seemed to draw up an unpleasant memory.

When Fred and George had debuted their fireworks, Umbridge had merely been a draconian would-be headmistress, not a woman who had had free rein to torture Muggle-borns in the Ministry.

When Romilda Vane had tried to trick him into drinking one of the twins' love potions, he had still been a Parselmouth who captained a champion Quidditch team instead of a former Parselmouth who couldn't remember the score of a match twenty minutes after he failed to capture the Snitch.

When Fred had demonstrated Headless Hats in the Gryffindor Common Room, he'd been alive.

X

These memories were still at the forefront of Harry's mind the next day when he went to deliver George's gift to Teddy. Andromeda smiled at him when he arrived. Harry liked it when Andromeda smiled; it made her look much less like her sister Bellatrix. There was still something familiar about her, but it was a warm and safe familiarity instead of a dreadful and raging one.

"This charmwork is remarkable," she said as she turned the rabbit over in her hands. "I've never seen its equal."

"It's okay for Teddy to have it, then?" Harry asked, reminding himself to repeat the compliment to George. "He can't get hurt with it?"

"I don't see how. We'll supervise him at first, just in case."

They set Teddy in his playpen with the rabbit. Teddy was immediately enthralled, and Andromeda produced a camera to document the scene as Teddy grabbed at the rabbit's long ears. Teddy's set look of concentration was so much like Remus' had been that Harry felt his throat threatening to swell shut. "Bad rabbit," Andromeda chided as it hopped away from Teddy.

"_Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my 'furry little problem' in company. Many people were under the impression that I owned a badly behaved rabbit."_

"Are you all right, Harry?"

Harry looked down and noticed that he had been gripping the side of the playpen so hard that his knuckles had turned white. He made a conscious effort to let go. "Fine. I'm glad the present was okay. I'll come again next week if that's all ri—"

"You're leaving?"

Harry nodded. It would be odd having Andromeda like him, even odder than having Professor McGonagall like him. But then, Professor McGonagall had always liked him and he just hadn't understood. Andromeda had clearly been eager to minimize their time spent together until the odd argument of their last meeting.

"Do me a favor and watch Teddy for a few minutes before you go, please?" Before Harry could agree, she left the room so fast he almost thought she had disapparated.

She returned not out of thin air with a pop, but walking from the kitchen levitating a tray. She handed Harry a mug that gave off an aroma so intoxicating that it put Harry in mind of Amortentia. "It's slightly alcoholic, but no more so than butterbeer," she told him as he took his first sip. It was wonderful, with a warmth that spread through him the way chocolate did after a dementor attack. In fact, there was an echo of chocolate in the taste, but it wasn't the dominant flavor.

"What is it?" Harry asked.

"Something Ted and I created together for NEWT level potions our last year at Hogwarts. I used to make it for Nymphadora when she was your age and she was _fine_."

The mention of Andromeda's dead husband and daughter calmed Harry more than the drink did. He always found it easiest to be calm when someone else was beginning to panic. Andromeda wasn't panicking, but the principle seemed to be the same when it came to mourning.

"This is amazing. You really invented it when you were still at school?" he asked, taking another drink.

"It was a collaborative effort. Ted brought in some ingredients that are usually considered Muggle. And I was pregnant with Nymphadora, and being pregnant can affect how things smell and taste to you, so she had a hand in it, too."

"You were pregnant while you were still in school?" he asked before he could stop himself. He had known that Andromeda was quite young to be a grandmother, but he'd never expected that she'd been pregnant at Hogwarts. It wasn't a shock that Dudley had ended up in that situation, but Andromeda was about as far from Dudley as could be, and, more practically, she would have had access to magical birth control. "I mean—"

Andromeda waved him off. "Yes, I was pregnant at school. Yes, I was pregnant at school because I planned it that way."

"Am I allowed to ask why?" he asked, knowing that he was pushing his luck.

"You may."

Curiosity welled up inside him. "Why?"

_To be continued._

**Next chapter**: _Andromeda's story has its first audience. Harry says more than he means to._

_Thank you as always for reviewing. _

**Answers to reviews:**

**Who was that friend of Harry's who was taken in by relatives but felt guilty all throughout?**

_It was a reference to Neville. Harry was being deliberately vague with details, almost to the point of being inaccurate, so Andromeda wouldn't figure out who he was talking about. _

**Why does Andromeda hate Harry?**

_She doesn't. I'm not sure Hermione guessed exactly what Andromeda was thinking when Harry told her what happened, but it's something like that._

**The part about Walburga was a little excessive. Why would she harm her first born?**

_It was supposed to be excessive, because Walburga is, for my purposes, clinically insane and in need of psychiatric help she isn't getting. She attacked her second-born, too, not really understanding what she was doing. _

**I've got trouble believing the Goblins' willingness to actually kill Harry, given the backlash they would experience from the wizards.**

_Me too, in the case of most goblins. But Bill does say that some are "fiercer" than others. It only takes one who's enough of a true believer to do it…_

**Is George suicidal?**

_The broom crash wasn't a suicide attempt, but he's certainly not happy._


	10. Past Gain

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

"Why?" Harry asked.

Andromeda felt something rather like happiness at what she knew was a rather impertinent question from a boy whose periodic appearances she had dreaded less than a week before. In truth, his interest was flattering. Her family, excepting Teddy, was dead; it was a change to have someone, anyone, ask her why she had done something.

She was also pleased to see that Tonks Miracle Brew still had the potential to have a miraculous effect. Moments before, Harry's face had crumbled with grief as they watched Teddy at play; now he appeared honestly amused and curious. But now was not the time to reflect on how Harry had suddenly gone from a threat to her relationship with her grandson to someone who triggered her maternal instincts all on his own.

"I understand that you've had the misfortune to live at Grimmauld Place periodically."

"Yeah."

"And between that and talking with Sirius, I assume you know something about what kind of family the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was."

"Something," Harry agreed.

"If you were a Black and you got married—and you were expected to get married—you were supposed to make a respectable pure-blood marriage."

"Sirius showed me that on the family tree at Grimmauld Place. He said you were his favorite cousin and your name was blasted off the tree for marrying a Muggle-born, but your sisters married bigoted Death Eaters so they got to stay."

The faintest ghost of a smile played around Andromeda's lips. "When you looked at the tree, did you happen to notice a woman named Lycoris Black?"

Harry shook his head.

"There's no reason you should have. She was born at the beginning of this century. She fell in love with a Muggle-born at Hogwarts, and she was fool enough to let it be known around the school that the two of them hoped to be married one day. Her grandfather, Phineas Nigellus, was Headmaster at the time."

Harry cringed in anticipation of the path the story would take. Andromeda smiled at his reaction.

"Phineas Nigellus warned Lycoris' father—another Sirius—that his daughter was in danger of going astray. Within a week, the boy was pressured to leave the school."

"But he hadn't done anything!"

"There was a reason Phineas Nigellus was the least popular headmaster Hogwarts ever had. To his credit, the boy wasn't expelled outright, and Lycoris begged to be allowed to leave in his place. Her father, not wanting the family to be subjected to a scandal, agreed. He found a tutor for Lycoris, and she dutifully went about her studies with the younger children in the attic schoolroom—I don't know if you've ever been in the attic at Grimmauld Place?"

"I have."

"That's where all of us studied until we were old enough to go to Hogwarts. She convinced her family of her contrition. She helped the younger children; she was as demure as you please. Then one day her mother intercepted a letter to the boy. She hadn't given him up at all; she had just intended to wait until he had finished school to run away with him. To make matters worse, that same day a new child was born into the family. It was obvious from birth that he was a squib, and he was rushed from his mother to be raised by Muggles so he wouldn't bring shame upon the family. Lycoris' father panicked. There had been at least a dozen Black women disowned over the centuries for marrying inappropriately, but Sirius was convinced by the birth of his squib nephew that he needed to save Lycoris by isolating her from all negative influences.

"And he did isolate her for the next several years. She was locked in Grimmauld Place around the clock. The tutors left off teaching her charms and potions, and told her only that it was her duty to have a pureblood marriage and give birth to pureblood babies. The whole family had been shaken by the birth of the squib. Phineas Nigellus had been the only wizard in his generation to pass on the Black name to children. He had four sons, but between them there were only three grandsons, not counting the squib."

"Of course the squib wouldn't count," said Harry with no small amount of sarcasm.

"No." Andromeda smiled despite the ghastly nature of the tale. "The lot of them were terrified that purebloods would die out, that Blacks would die out. They needed to keep Lycoris around for breeding purposes."

"They locked her up forever?"

"They didn't need to. A few years of that, to the best of my understanding, and something went out of her. They didn't need to lock her in. She had to be reminded to eat, to bathe, to take care of herself. She was completely indifferent as to whether she lived or died—not suitable marriage material at all."

"Did she go mad?"

"I expect so. She wouldn't have been the first or the last in the family. I saw her several times when I was a child. Around Christmas, she was brought back to Grimmauld Place from wherever her brother stowed her most of the year. My sisters and I ran screaming from her. We slept in one bed to protect one another. She died when I was about eight. I'm sure it was a relief to her as well as to the rest of us. But she'd served her purpose. All of the other Black witches had an example of what not to do.

"By the time I came along, my father and Uncle Orion were more concerned than ever about the Black name dying out. Pureblood mania was running wild with You-Know-Who getting stronger every year. My older sister was married right out of school, and I knew that the plans were the same for me. I needed to make sure that they knew I wasn't worth the kind of intervention they gave Lycoris. Married wasn't enough. I could have been caught in the attempt. My father might have found a way to get a divorce or an annulment. He would have sworn up and down that the marriage was never consummated. I had to prove that I was not _Toujours Pur_ so no one could deny it and no pureblood would have me. I couldn't leave my family any option but to disown me."

"That was brave." Harry was a typical Gryffindor; _brave_ was the first compliment that came to his lips.

"It was necessary," Andromeda corrected. "Self-preservation. I was seventeen and I didn't want to live without Ted. Ted is—Ted was extraordinary. There aren't many teenage boys who can listen to their girlfriends ask to have a baby right then without running screaming in the other direction. But he agreed, and toward the end of our seventh year, when we were sure I was pregnant, we snuck into Hogsmeade to be legally married." She forced another smile over the all-consuming reminder that Ted and Nymphadora were both dead. "It might not have gone off if it hadn't been for your godfather."

X

Andromeda fancied that her robes were too tight across her abdomen. That couldn't be; her figure appeared unchanged when she stared at her naked body in the mirror when she was left alone in her dormitory. The tightness was somewhere inside her skin, a part of her nervousness. She had considered every possible plan, and she had chosen the best one. She had put it in action. It was too late to turn back now; she ought to feel calm, cool, and collected.

Instead, she felt as if she were about to be sick.

That, at least, she could blame on the tiny life inside of her. Morning sickness, she had learned, was not limited to mornings.

"All right, 'Dromeda?" Ted asked as he approached her with his friend Evan Corrin in tow. Evan knew that they meant to marry that day because he was to be their witness; he did not, of course, know that she was pregnant.

She forced a smile even though she knew Ted would know it was forced. "I'll be perfect this evening."

"That's the right answer," said Evan jovially. As they crossed the Hogwarts grounds, Evan and Ted kept up a steady stream of chatter that Andromeda couldn't quite follow over the rolling of her stomach. Her nausea intensified when they reached the edge of the grounds and saw several figures near the small break in the security spell through which they had intended to slip. Among these figures was Headmaster Dumbledore.

"Miss Black, Mr. Tonks, Mr. Corrin," Dumbledore greeted them pleasantly.

Ted and Evan returned his greeting warmly; Andromeda was barely able to muster a pleasant hello.

"It's a lovely day for a walk," said Dumbledore with a casual lightness which Andromeda suspected had never fooled anyone. "That's why I came out to see personally to re-securing the boundaries of the grounds. In times like these, we have to be more careful than ever that students don't leave the grounds without permission. They would be putting themselves in grave danger."

"Students actually _do_ that?" asked Evan, his eyes too dramatically wide. Andromeda winced inwardly. For the first time in a long time, she wondered at her own decision to entrust so much of her future to a pack of Hufflepuffs.

"Indeed they do, Mr. Corrin," Dumbledore twinkled in return. "I know none of you three would consider such a thing, but, alas, not all of those at Hogwarts are so conscientious."

Andromeda rushed Ted and Evan away from Dumbledore as soon as she could. They had no choice but to head back toward the castle.

"We'll have to try it another day," Ted said when they were out of earshot. "Dumbledore will be on the lookout for us now."

Andromeda shook her head firmly. "No." The longer they waited, the riskier their plan became. Evan was Ted's closest friend, but his reaction to Dumbledore terrified her. He could easily be tricked into revealing their intentions, and if word got back to Narcissa or Regulus, the game was over.

"Do you know another way of getting off the grounds?" Ted prompted.

"You know I don't." She cursed herself inwardly for not having found a backup escape route during the months since she and Ted had agreed to marry before leaving school.

"Do you think you can find one today?"

Andromeda gritted her teeth. This wasn't the sort of thing at which she excelled. That was Bellatrix, and—she felt a jolt of hope—Sirius. "I may know someone who can help."

Ted and Evan exchanged an admiring look which Andromeda thought was rather flattering. "Lead on," said Evan, unnecessarily, for she had already maneuvered them back into the castle and up a flight of stairs.

As they drew nearer their destination, they passed more and more scarlet-and-gold-clad students who gave friendly nods to Ted and Evan but glowered at Andromeda and muttered under their breath.

"You!" Andromeda commanded a small boy who had tried to slip past them and into the Gryffindor common room. "Tell Sirius Black that his cousin wants to see him and won't leave until she does." The boy, white as a sheet at having been addressed by an older Slytherin, didn't answer as he tumbled through the door that had swung open before him.

"Do you think there's any chance he'll do it?" asked Evan dubiously.

"Yes. He'll do it for the chance to talk to Sirius, not to do me a favor. But it's all the same in the end."

Not thirty seconds later, she was proven right when Sirius stalked into the corridor with a haughty, guarded expression on his face and his wand in his hand. He softened a bit and relaxed his grip on his wand when he registered Andromeda's presence. "Is everything all right?"

She shook her head. "No. We need to get into Hogsmeade without being seen, and I believe that you have a way of making that happen."

Sirius didn't blink. Unlike Evan, Sirius knew how to pretend that he had never bent a rule, never mind that everyone in the school knew his name because he and his friend James had rather spectacularly set a record for the most detentions accumulated in a single term. "If it's urgent, perhaps you should ask Professor Slughorn for permission to leave. He's pleased with you—he was going on about some potion you invented in class the other day."

She lowered her voice and stared hard into her cousin's gray, Black eyes. "I need to marry Ted before Father and Mother suspect anything. We have an appointment in Hogsmeade today. If we miss it, I don't know when our next chance will be."

Something unspoken passed between them. She could feel the wheels in Sirius' mind turning. Then, quick as a flash, he raised his wand. "Obscuro!" Ted and Evan shouted in protest as blindfolds covered their eyes; Andromeda remained silent in the sudden darkness.

"If all you care about is getting into Hogsmeade, you won't care whether or not you see how," Sirius said quietly. "And you'll let me spin you around."

"Do as he says," Andromeda ordered. Her upset stomach cried out in protest as Sirius took her by the shoulders and turned her in a circle to disorient her. She willed her insides to remain calm. If this was what Sirius needed to do to assure himself that they wouldn't know or tell his secrets, it was a small price to pay for his help.

She stumbled a bit as Sirius led her up and down, left and right. They travelled through a tight doorway and down a steep ramp. The air suddenly smelled damp, and Andromeda suspected that they were in a tunnel—one that stretched on and on, perhaps all the way to the town.

The seemingly interminable walk ended with Sirius removing their blindfolds in the open air of Hogsmeade. "Now what?" Sirius asked as the other three struggled to get their bearings. "Did you want me to wait for you somewhere or am I invited to the wedding?"

"Of course you're invited," said Ted before Andromeda could answer. "Today, and to the party we have when we've officially announced it and things have settled down." He pointed the way to a small house, around the back of which was a small sign announcing the availability of various legal services by appointment only.

As much as she had looked forward to this moment for years, Andromeda was unable to make it last. The "ceremony" was quick and perfunctory and consisted of little more than Ted and Andromeda promising to love each other forever, as if they had never done that before. They exchanged rings and signed a square of parchment that declared them legally married.

The old woman performing the ceremony handed the parchment to Evan, their witness, so he could sign that he had seen them marry. Then she smiled at Sirius. "Are you a witness as well?"

"Yes," said Sirius, just as Ted and Andromeda said "no."

Ted took Sirius by the arm. Sirius ordinarily did not submit to such pseudo-parental gestures, but Ted had a way of making what seemed like most of the younger students in the school view him as a well-intentioned, well-respected older brother with their best interests at heart. Everyone talked to Ted, and everyone listened to him. "You don't need to get in trouble with your family over this," he said quietly.

Sirius' face remained quite still, and Andromeda didn't know whether he was about to acquiesce or make a cutting, sardonic remark about Ted not knowing anything about his family. As it happened, he did neither. Instead, he laughed enthusiastically, and, quicker than quick, wrote his name—bold, clear, and painfully legible—across the bottom of the parchment.

Sometimes Andromeda got so caught up in her plans to make the smoothest possible exit from her family that she forgot that Sirius took great pleasure in provoking his parents. And on this day of all days, she couldn't begrudge anyone a joy of any kind. She laughed, too, and Ted and Evan joined in—no matter that they didn't know quite why.

X

Harry and Andromeda grinned at each other. Harry saw a flicker of Sirius in Andromeda as she smiled, and a pleasant warmth rushed over him. It was nice that Andromeda could remind him of Sirius instead of Bellatrix Lestrange. It was also nice that hearing a story about Sirius he hadn't heard before felt like a gift instead of like a knife in his chest reminding him of how little time he had had with his godfather.

"The first time I saw Tonks—er, Dora—she came to my aunt and uncle's house to take me to stay at Order headquarters for the rest of the summer," Harry began without knowing why. "I think about half the Order came with her, but out of all of them she was the one who knew what she was about. She was the one who got my aunt and uncle out of the way, and then she was the only one who had the sense to light her wand when they all came into the house. When I saw her I couldn't believe how young she was, especially when she told me she was an auror. Mad-Eye Moody was there, going over every horrible scenario he could think of, and Tonks kept asking him who he knew who'd lost a buttock from keeping his wand in his pocket and telling him the way he cleaned his mad eye was disgusting. And she was yelling at Remus because he called her Nymphadora instead of Tonks. She came upstairs with me to help me pack. There isn't anything out of place anywhere in the Dursleys' house, but my room was a wreck because I hadn't picked anything up for a month. She took one look at my room and said 'this is better.' Then, later, when she had to help hide the Dursleys she _forced_ them to be messy. It was _brilliant_."

Harry stopped in mid-thought. There was no point to his story; it wasn't a story at all, but a stream of thoughts about how much he had liked Tonks. Andromeda's face was set the way it had almost always been before she'd decided she liked Harry.

"I'm sorry," he said, and, unlike the last time he had apologized to Andromeda, he meant it. Tonks had been dead for less than a month. Sirius had been dead for two years. Talking about her wasn't going to help. His own throat threatened to close again as his eyes fell again on Teddy and the rabbit that had reminded him of Remus.

"You don't need to be sorry for thinking my daughter was brilliant," Andromeda replied. "I'm not about to fault you for your good taste."

Harry thought that he would like to tell Andromeda that he had wanted to make her feel better the way she had made him feel better, but he had absolutely no idea how he might go about saying something like that to a woman he barely knew. In fact, he didn't know how to say something like that to someone he knew well. He never had that sort of conversation with Ron, Hermione, or Ginny; he might _do_ something to cheer them, but he never provided commentary with it.

"Thank you, Harry," Andromeda said as if he'd done the thing properly.

"For what?"

"For giving me an audience. I've been thinking about the past constantly—for the first time in my life—so you're the first person who has ever been in a position to listen. And you listen very well."

"Didn't you ever tell Ton— Dora that story?"

Andromeda shrugged gracefully. "She never asked. My life before she was born was the _only_ thing she never asked about, mind you." Harry, who had sometimes thought that Tonks was inquisitive to the point of being annoying, could easily believe this. "From the time she could talk, she was curious about everything. But the Black blood in our veins was the one thing she would just as soon not know much about. And I would have just as soon not talked about it or thought about it. I had Ted, I had a wonderful life, and my life before Ted wasn't something I wanted to dwell on. Now I can't stop myself from dwelling. I suppose people deal with grief in odd ways."

"Some people have to work, constantly, and never stop," Harry mused, thinking of Mrs. Weasley. "Some people get quiet," and he thought of George, "and some people pick fights," and he thought of Ginny.

"What about you?" she asked, and he remembered again that he had sometimes found her daughter's inquiries a bit too much.

"I don't know." Andromeda didn't challenge him, but something in her demeanor let him know that she didn't entirely accept his answer. "Ron and Hermione reckon I refuse to accept what happened, that when people die I find excuses to believe they're alive."

"Like with Remus' body missing?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah. I saw him dead, and I know about a hundred other people did as well. But… but I have to find out what happened. I have to find his body."

"Do I need to tell you to be careful while you're poking around whatever you're poking around?"

"No," Harry assured her. "But I appreciate it."

**Next Chapter: **_Harry finds two ends. Or are they beginnings? _

_Thank you for the reviews!_

**Response to reviews:**

**Is there any way we the readers could talk you into giving each chapter a title?** **It makes it easier to remember we were at.**

_I'll think about it. I didn't realize it was a problem._

**I have a question, are the answers to your reviews actual questions you got from reviews?**

_Yes. Sometimes I rephrase them slightly, but if you check my review page you'll see them all. In the earlier chapters I was responding to the reviews privately, but that doesn't work for the unsigned reviews. Then a few reviewers told me that they like reading this section, so I kept it. _

**I think you should write a sequel for **_**Raised to the Third Power**_

_Thank you. :-) But re-editing that (which I just did) was embarrassing enough. Writing more of it might be lethal._

**I find the Andromeda bits... not tedious but tedious to the story, like they should be two separate stories? **

_I forgot this one from the last chapter. I agree that the back-and-forth device didn't work as well as I'd hoped, but because of what happens in the next few chapters I can't change it. _


	11. Present Trial

_**Warning**__: Gruesomeness and gore in this chapter beyond the usual. Legitimate T rating. Don't want to know? Skip to the divider midway through and begin reading at: "The Ministry was packed with witches and wizards along with a few house-elves and goblins and even a centaur."_

* * *

"And a spokesgoblin for Gringotts Bank has confirmed again that any threats made against Harry Potter, the Chosen One, were not made with the knowledge or consent of Gringotts' governing council," the static-distorted voice intoned from within the radio. "He repeated that the Ministry, on the Chosen One's behalf, has made Gringotts whole for all damages sustained in the infamous robbery by the Chosen One along with accomplices Ronald Wealsey and Hermione Granger. He further added that the break-in would not have been successful had it not been for the interference of Death Eaters in the workings of Gringotts at the time, and that the bank is now as secure as it has ever been, and that 'no other thief will find himself as lucky as Potter in the future.'"

Harry closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall of Ron's bedroom. "Are they ever going to stop talking about us?" he asked.

"If you'd stop saving the world, that might help," suggested Ginny. She was sprawled on the floor next to him. Each time she moved her head, her long, soft hair brushed against Harry's face. Harry found it very hard to remember that anything besides Ginny existed each time it happened, which was just as well most of the time.

Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione had barricaded themselves into Ron's room with the radio so they could listen to the live broadcast of the trial of Dolores Umbridge. They had considered attending in person, but the prospect of lounging lazily around Ron's room with popcorn and butterbeer while they listened had proven more attractive. In Ron's room, there were never more than three sets of eyes on Harry, which was good. And in Ron's room, Harry could steal the occasional kiss from Ginny when Ron and Hermione were distracted, which was better.

On the first day of testimony, Ron had suggested that they each take a drink of firewhiskey each time they heard Umbridge's throat-clearing _hem hem_. Ginny had quite rightly protested that they would all be drunk within ten minutes if they tried such a thing, and that instead they should kiss each time. That had been fun for a few minutes, but they had abandoned the game as soon as the discussion of Umbridge's crimes began in earnest. Harry had learned over the past year and a half that few things didn't mix with kissing Ginny, but systematic torture was one of them.

The vindictive pleasure of listening as Umbridge got her due was progressively marginalized by renewed horror of exactly what she had done. They abandoned all pretense of drinking games, kissing games, and even popcorn, but still felt themselves unable to miss a moment of the trial. Harry had never listened so intently to Umbridge when she had been an instructor at Hogwarts.

"We now return you to our live coverage of the trial of Dolores Jane Umbridge for crimes against Muggle-borns," the announcer said at last. "Proper testimony has been concluded, with sentencing set to take place tomorrow morning at the opening of business. If convicted, Ms. Umbridge will spend the rest of her life in Azkaban without hope of appeal. The accused will now be allowed to say a few words in her own defense."

"Finally," muttered Harry, although testimony had lasted for less than a week. Umbridge had already been questioned by members of the Wizengamot, and she hadn't distanced herself from her well-documented belief that all living things that were not pure-blooded wizards were beneath contempt—and that some pure-blooded wizards were, as well.

"Good afternoon!" began Umbridge far too cheerily. Harry felt a familiar rush of dislike at the sound of the breathy, high-pitched voice, and couldn't stop himself smirking when no one returned Umbridge's greeting.

"The rare and precious gifts with which a witch or wizard is born must be guarded carefully by each member of the Wizarding community. If this treasure trove is not protected, it may be forever lost, whether through mere attrition or through jealous acts of malice of those who covet our riches. One need look no further than the witch burnings of a few short centuries ago, or the robbing and looting committed by goblins, or the mutilation and cannibalism perpetuated by werewolves in their cyclic attacks, to know that this is so."

They exchanged a particularly dark look at the mention of werewolves, but continued to listen as Umbridge paused and giggled a nauseating, girlish giggle.

"Wizards and witches older and cleverer than those who have brought me before you long ago put in place the methods for preserving our way of life. When one wizard insists upon being irresponsible, it draws danger upon us all. That is why the discipline of a child who will not obey his betters must last until the message sinks in and not a moment less. This is why Muggle-born wizards who would necessarily share our secrets with their Muggle families must be prevented from learning our secrets to begin with. This is why dangerous half-breeds must be carefully monitored—registered, tagged, and tracked. The laws I enforced as head of the Muggle-born Registration Commission were for the protection of all."

"Except Muggles, Muggle-borns, anyone who liked Dumbledore, anyone who liked Harry, anyone who disagreed with her, werewolves, centaurs, house-elves, merpeople…" Ron muttered.

"Mere regulation and registration are not to be criticized. To the contrary, this progress represented the bare minimum of necessary improvements. In past ages, before the advent of dangerous integration of the Ministry with Muggles and half-breeds, much more severe measures were taken. I did not adopt these measures. Some of the interrogators have—" and she giggled as if in disbelief—"suggested that I treated the Muggle-born wizards I evaluated and registered for the protection of all as if they were less than human, or as if they were monsters. This could not be further from the truth. Those who were found not to be in lawful possession of magic were merely separated from their stolen wands and resituated so they could no longer do harm. A werewolf, on the other hand—a monster, a true danger—should be executed and his body cut into pieces so that they can do no further harm, and finally serve the society that they would torment as ingredients in potions which—"

"That _woman_!" shrieked Hermione in disgust, as Ron swore in such a way that Harry was glad Mrs. Weasley couldn't hear them. Harry, though, felt suddenly calm. He reached for his trainers and began shoving his feet into them.

"What are you doing?" asked Ginny, presumably for form's sake, because Harry was sure that the other three knew exactly what he was doing.

Harry stood up. "I'm going to Knockturn Alley, where I'm going to find what's left of his body so I can bury it beside his wife."

No one had to ask who _he_ was.

"You don't know that that's what she means," said Ron dubiously, and a little queasily.

Harry raised his hand to the level of his face, displaying once more the scar Umbridge had given him. "Subtlety has never been her strong point." He said it without mocking Umbridge or pleading with the others to agree with him. He trusted his instincts and he was going to follow them. "Any of you lot coming?"

"I am," Ginny said quickly.

"No," Ron told her flatly. "You're underage."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "No one pays attention to that with everything else going on. Besides, Harry can Apparate me, and nothing else really needs magic. I can do Muggle lock picking."

"We're not picking locks," Hermione injected quickly.

"I wouldn't put it past us," said Ron, who had put on his trainers as well. "Ready when you are, mate."

They all trooped downstairs, told Mrs. Weasley that they were going to London, and Apparated from the designated spot in front of the Burrow. Ron made one more half-hearted protest against Ginny's accompanying them, which Ginny summarily ignored. Harry didn't bother joining in the argument. He hated to see Ginny in danger, but he didn't think there would be much danger in this. This task would be, at worst, a gruesome one, and he thought he might be glad to have someone with him who reminded him that there were beautiful things in the world, too.

It took Harry a moment to re-orient himself after Apparating. Knockturn Alley looked much as Diagon Alley had looked much before—suddenly abandoned in reaction to a drastic change in the political climate. Borgin & Burkes was still there, of course, and three or four other store fronts looked occupied as well. The vendors who had sold what wares they could carry or fit in their carts were conspicuously absent. A wave of anti-Dark sentiment drove the smallest dealers away first.

"Don't know why we didn't think to look here when we first had a problem," Harry muttered. "They sell that here, I know I've seen human bones and fingernails for sale."

"What do you plan to do?" asked Hermione. "Go into the stores and ask if they have any werewolf body parts for sale?"

That had, in fact, been one of what Harry considered his two primary options. The other was to break into each shop and quietly search it, but that seemed rather more hazardous than he would have preferred. Corpses were the least dangerous items for sale in Knockturn Alley. "You're right," he told Hermione. "I'm too recognizable. Ginny's a good actress, and her picture isn't in the _Prophet_ every day. She can do it."

"Excellent!" beamed Ginny, as if her birthday had just come a month early and brought Christmas along with it.

Ron made a strangled sound, but valiantly carried on with his effort to treat Harry's relationship with Ginny more or less as he would have treated Harry's relationship with another witch.

"We'll be right here," Harry assured Ron, slinging the Invisibility Cloak over his arm. "And they don't mind people asking questions in those stores." He turned to Ginny. "But if they get suspicious, they'll throw you out. Borgin & Burkes did with Hermione two years ago."

"I can do it," said Ginny confidently. "Change the color of my hair, though, will you? Red means Weasley to too many people."

"Good idea." Harry darkened Ginny's hair to a nondescript mousy brown, about the color Tonks' hair had been when she hadn't been able to shape-shift.

Ginny marched forward with a determined glint in her eye, and Harry gave the Invisibility Cloak to Ron as a concession to Ron's brotherly instincts. Ron stood at the door of each store as Ginny entered, while Harry and Hermione, less invisible, hung back with their wands at the ready.

Each time she left a shop, Ginny shook her newly brown head "no," and Harry began to regret his decision to let Ron be the one to follow her closely. It wasn't that he doubted Ron's ability, or Ginny's, but Ginny had not had as much experience with this kind of thing as the rest of them had. She might not notice that someone was lying; she might not notice the detail that would lead them in the right direction.

Then Ginny left the final shop at a dead run, stumbling into Ron and knocking the Cloak free. Even from the other side of the alley, Harry could see that her face was flushed and her eyes were bright. In her hand, she clutched a paper bag.

Her flashing brown eyes met Harry's green ones. "I didn't have enough money," she hissed, her voice shaking with rage. "It wasn't that he realized who I am, it was that werewolf corpses 'bring a profit in these lean times.' Even though he couldn't expect as much for the body as if it had been in one piece, but the woman who sold it was superstitious and cut it up first!"

Ron and Hermione both looked ill.

"What's in the bag?" Harry forced himself to ask.

"Hair," Ginny whispered. "He took pity on me because he thought I was cute, and he let me buy—I do think it's his."

She held out the bag for Harry to inspect, but Harry's hands were shaking uncontrollably, and Ginny seemed to have trouble loosening her grip on the bag. In the end, they sank to their knees by the side of the alley and set the bag on the ground before fumbling it open. Inside, Harry saw a tangle of soft brown strands mixed with coarser white ones.

"It could belong to anyone," whispered Hermione as she stared over Harry's shoulder.

"Do you reckon it does?" Harry asked her.

"No. I agree with Ginny."

"Ron?"

"I think they're right."

"Then it looks like we'll be breaking in after all," Harry decided. "I'm not giving the shop half a knut, and I'm not bringing the Ministry into this. I still don't trust anyone high up at the Ministry except Kingsley, and I don't want to distract him with this Umbridge stuff going on, even if he'd come. Besides, this is between Remus and me."

He waited for the others to protest, as they always seemed to when he laid out a plan. They did not, and that made him almost uneasy, like he ought to second-guess himself if his friends weren't going to do it for him.

"Right, then. Ron and I will take the Cloak and get back inside before it closes for the night. Ginny and Hermione can go over to Diagon Alley and wait until it gets dark. That's when we'll do it."

"I'll open the door to the shop and pretend to be lost so you can get inside under the Cloak," agreed Hermione. "Look for a freezer," Hermione added quietly as Harry and Ron disappeared. "That's where you'd have to store something like that."

Ron and Harry slipped into the small shop easily amidst Hermione's quite excellent distraction. It was Ron who spotted the freezer right away, and Ron who began to pick the lock in the Muggle manner when the saleswizard left early and Alohomora proved useless.

Two hours passed, and the lock held firm. Ron had barely moved an inch in all that time; he made one try after another with hardly a break. Harry had learned to pick locks at a young age due to the Dursleys' rather irritating habit of locking him in the cupboard under the stairs; however, each time he considered opening his mouth to suggest that Ron take a break and let him have a go, something inside him warned against it. He had rarely seen Ron work so diligently at anything in their seven eventful years of friendship.

All at once, the freezer swung open, revealing darkness that seemed to go on forever, far beyond the confines of the grungy little shop.

"Brilliant," Harry said, trying to muster up some enthusiasm.

"Fred taught me well."

Of course he had.

It was around then that Hermione's and Ginny's pale faces appeared in the alleyway just outside the store. Harry hadn't noticed that darkness was falling outside.

He and Ron quietly unlocked the front door and let Hermione and Ginny inside. "Ron's just got the freezer open," Harry whispered.

"Well done," Hermione complimented. "And inside?"

"We haven't looked. Dark."

Hermione mumbled what sounded like ludicrously complicated spells in the direction of the windows. "That should keep anyone from seeing the light in here. Lumos!"

"Lumos," Ron and Harry repeated.

The light of their wands suddenly filled the store. Instead of making the small space more welcoming, the light cast horrible-looking weapons, bloody knickknacks, and a cage of poisonous spiders into stark relief. Harry turned back to the freezer as quickly as possible and held his wand up to the entrance.

At first, the darkness seemed to swallow the light but after a moment Harry was able to see all manner of disgusting things on the floor and the many shelves, and even hanging from the ceiling. Thanks to magical expansion, the freezer was much too big inside for the space it occupied outside. Harry couldn't even see the back wall.

"I'll go in," he decided. "You lot stay here. One of you keep watch at the front and the other two make sure the door stays open."

"Keep talking while you're in there," suggested Ginny. "Just so we can be sure you're all right."

"All right," Harry agreed, but as he took in the sight of a dead mermaid suspended from the ceiling and a jar of what he was sure was unicorn blood, he found himself at a loss for words.

"Harry!" shouted Hermione, sounding a step away from frantic.

"Dead mermaid," Harry managed to call back. "Unicorn blood. What looks like brains, I don't know from what." He swallowed past the bile rising in his throat. "A human leg—not his, skin is too dark. Guts of _something_, don't ask me what. Some kind of egg, might be dragon, but wouldn't you keep that warm, not cold? A centaur—no one we know. Heads," he managed. They looked human, but they also looked like they had been there for a good long time. He forced himself to inspect each carefully. "No one we know. More blood. Chimera? Erumpent horns and tails—didn't think you would freeze that, either. Oh—"

And he could no longer talk, no matter that he knew Hermione, Ginny, and Ron would be frantic with fear immediately.

He had found what he was looking for.

The hair on the severed head had been cut short, presumably for transactions like the one Ginny had completed earlier that day. From the expression left on his face, Harry could tell that Remus had died instantly as a result of the killing curse. His limbs had been severed and were lined up along the shelf next to his head; the torso was intact in one large piece.

Harry barely managed to turn around and sink to his knees before he was sick.

As he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, he became hazily aware of Ron's bellowing. "SAY SOMETHING OR I'M COMING IN!"

"Stop," Harry tried to shout, but his voice did not cooperate. "STOP!" he managed.

"Find something?"

"What we were looking for."

Ron swore creatively, and that helped Harry regain his feet and his balance. Ron was disgusted and furious, so Harry didn't have to be right then.

"Ron and Ginny, stay by the doors," Harry commanded. "Hermione, I want you to come here, but I want you to look straight down at your feet. Not at the walls, not at the ceiling. Down. I'll tell you when to stop." Hermione came forward more quickly than Harry had done. "Scourgify," Harry managed to mumble at the puddle of vomit on the floor. Then, to Hermione, "stop."

"What did you scourgify?" asked Hermione when she had gone as still as a statue. "Were you sick?"

"You would be, too, if you saw what I did. _Don't look up_!"

Hermione winced and resumed staring at her shoes. "Sorry. Sort of a reflex."

Harry nodded, through Hermione couldn't see him. "I need you to conjure something we can carry his body in. It doesn't need to be shaped like a coffin, but it needs about that much space and it needs to be strong enough. You can do that?"

He hadn't even finished his request when Hermione conjured a large, sturdy case from thin air. He was reminded forcibly of the previous Christmas Eve when she had conjured a wreath for the graves of his dead parents, and he had managed to spare her the worst of the details of the possession of a woman's decaying body by a snake.

"Right then," Harry said, dreading the next part of his task.

"Don't touch anything without casting Specialis Revelio," Hermione warned.

"I know," said Harry, even though he had been about to do just that. "Specialis Revelio."

Nothing happened.

"Try a summoning charm before you touch anything with your hands."

"No. That would be like digging Dobby's grave with magic. There are some things where magic is a cheat."

"He wouldn't mind. He'd tell you off for taking a risk in a store that's full of Dark magic when you don't have to. Then he'd ask whether you ever listened to your Defense Against the Dark Arts professors."

Harry paused and tightened his grip on his wand. Hermione was right, but it still felt wrong. "He might not mind, but I do."

"Well, I mind your minding!" While Harry was deciphering that, she added "Just try summoning first, and if it works, finish by hand. Please?"

"All right," Harry agreed. "Accio!" he called, before he lost his nerve.

There was a crackling sound and a flash, but nothing happened. Hermione was still staring fixedly at the floor. "Finite Incantatem," she tried, pointing her wand in the correct direction without seeing her target.

"Accio," Harry tried again. This time, it worked.

The box closed and sealed perfectly. Hermione's conjuring skills were extraordinary.

"All right, turn, Hermione. Time to go." He floated the box along behind her.

Harry had accidentally seen a roll of parchment that described where Andromeda had buried her daughter at the beginning of the summer. None of them knew the area well enough to Apparate there, so they returned to Diagon Alley to borrow brooms from George's shop. Ginny had had the foresight to ask George to leave the brooms where they could be borrowed while Ron was picking the lock to the freezer. It took most of the rest of the night to reach funeral home, and some of the morning to explain the situation when the owner arrived.

That done, they stared grimly and solemnly at one another as they left the funeral home.

"Obviously none of us are going to be in the mood for breakfast," said Hermione, who still looked more than slightly green. With effort, she turned to Harry. "Do you want to see Mrs. Tonks and Teddy right away? Or report this to law enforcement?"

"No," said Harry. "I have to get cleaned up so I can to go to Umbridge's sentencing."

None of the other three questioned his change of heart as regarded attending the trial in person; instead, they all agreed to the plan with firm, silent nods.

X

The Ministry was packed with witches and wizards along with a few house-elves and goblins and even a centaur. A few harried-looking wizards in Ministry robes were struggling to keep order.

"Really, we can't let anyone else in—it's not safe to expand the room any further, the Muggles do notice eventually—it will all be broadcast on the radio, and reported in the _Prophet_ and the _Quibbler_ and what-have you—I'm sorry, there's no more room—Harry Potter!"

It was as disconcerting as always to be famous, and it felt a bit like a cheat to be immediately escorted to the large room where Umbridge was to be sentenced. The throng parted before him, clearing a path, but Harry got a hard grip on Hermione's and Ginny's hands all the same. Hermione, he sensed rather than saw, was holding tight to Ron with her other hand. The idea of being separated now was intolerable. For a moment, when Harry caught a glimpse of pink-and-purple velvet bow at the front of the room, he wanted to shake free of the girls and reach for his wand instead, but both Hermione and Ginny instinctively squeezed his hands at just the right time. He and they were better than that. They had to be, in honor of all of those who had taught them.

In the very front row, three witches stood to offer them their fine vantage point. Harry accepted with a hoarse "thank you," and the four of them squeezed into three places.

A murmur that was at once loud and quiet passed over the rest of the audience as they looked at Harry and his friends. It reached Umbridge, chained to a chair in the center of the room, and, as if in spite of herself, she turned to look at Harry. He met her gaze steadily, trying to put everything he wanted her to feel into that one look.

She batted her eyes in a twisted echo of flirtation, and Harry ignored the bile in his throat to focus on the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot as he entered the balcony in his plum robes embellished with a silver "W." The rest of the Wizengamot followed.

It was over in less time than it had taken Harry to carve the words _I must not tell lies_ into his own flesh.

"Those in favor of clearing Ms. Umbridge of all charges?"

A smattering of hands were raised.

"Those in favor of conviction?"

The vast majority raised their hands.

Two hit wizards unfastened the chains that bound Umbridge and led her away.

"That was it?" asked Ron.

"What did you want? A public flogging?" asked Hermione, who also seemed rather disconcerted. "She's going to prison for the rest of her life."

Harry just managed to stop himself from replying that a public flogging would have been fine with him. _Never descend to their level_, he reminded himself for perhaps the thousandth time. He didn't even remember who had said that to him for the first time. It might have been Dumbledore, or Remus or Sirius or even Mad-Eye. It hardly mattered. It had been someone who had lived, but was dead.

Torture was wrong. Revenge for the sake of revenge was wrong. The cruelest punishment that was his to give would be indifference—_indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike_. Dumbledore was definitely the one who'd said that; he'd been talking about Sirius with Kreacher.

Still, Kreacher was rather more thoughtful than Umbridge. Harry wasn't sure that Umbridge would pick up on his total indifference without help. "I want to see her."

Ron shot Harry a look from across Hermione. "Bet no one's ever said that about Umbridge before."

"Probably no one ever will again," Harry agreed. He looked again to the balcony; Kingsley was sure to be there somewhere. Harry caught his eye, and Kingsley gestured to a hit wizard to let Harry into a winding staircase that led to the area where the Wizengamot sat. Ginny followed him; Ron and Hermione stayed behind.

"Where is she?" Harry asked Kingsley, barely bothering to greet him first.

"We'll be holding her here until the chaos dies down, and then she'll be taken to Azkaban."

"May I see her?"

"I'm surprised it's taken you this long to ask."

Kingsley himself led Harry and Ginny through a winding corridor to a dungeon that didn't look like anything but a prison. Umbridge sat in a cell, as pink and fluffy as ever.

"You have a visitor," announced Kingsley. It sounded as if he expected to enjoy this.

Harry took that at his cue to step up to the bars that separated Umbridge from the rest of the room. He didn't get too close; Umbridge didn't strike him as the type of witch who would attempt to steal the wand he carried and make an escape, but there was no reason to take the risk. Kingsley took in Harry's decision and smiled approvingly.

"Professor Umbridge," he called. He wasn't sure why he chose to address her as "professor." That was a title he used for wizards and witches he revered. But he couldn't very well call her by the names he'd used in his mind over the years, the politest of which was "cow."

Even now, in a cell awaiting transportation to prison, she simpered in his direction. "Hello, Mr. Potter. Have you come to tell me how happy you are that I'm going to Azkaban?" she asked sweetly. She might have been asking a four-year-old to show her the picture he had drawn that day.

"No, actually," said Harry, relishing an unexpected feeling of calm centeredness that made his task all the easier. "I just wanted to let you know that I found Remus' body."

Her too-wide mouth gaped into her approximation of a smile. "You followed my little clue. Well done. You were my student once, and while not the most _promising_ student, I did not wish to give up on you. I hope that this last lesson has shown you what comes to those who disobey. Remus, as you call him, disobeyed. He pretended to be married to a witch—a witch of unfortunate opinions, to be sure, but nonetheless a human being who could trace her magical ancestry back many centuries."

"And tomorrow her husband's body will be beside hers, like it should have been all along."

She sighed. Even the sigh was high-pitched. "No, you were never a promising student. You never had the temperament to separate the truth from what you wished to be true. Nymphadora Tonks was not married to the werewolf Remus Lupin. Werewolves do not have the right to marry, let alone have children."

"Yeah," said Harry quickly. "Yeah, Teddy Lupin is part of why I wanted to talk to you. You should know that he's why I'm not going to push for another trial so you can be sentenced to another life in prison after you serve this one. Since there won't be another trial, it won't be common knowledge, and Teddy won't ever find out about it. Bad enough growing up without his parents without that, right? And the rest of us can forget about you that much sooner. Your friends the dementors are gone, but that only means prisoners aren't paid any attention at all. You can think of Teddy and me if you like, but we won't ever think of you."

Without bidding Umbridge a proper goodbye, Harry took Ginny by the hand and led her from the dungeon.

Umbridge's outraged scream followed Harry and Ginny as they retreated. The noise sounded like nothing Harry had ever heard before, but it let him know that he had achieved his goal all the same.

Dumbledore had been right about indifference being more powerful than hate. But then, Dumbledore had been rather more clever than most men.

X

Harry and Ginny Apparated to a hill a good distance from the Burrow. A walk in the summer air seemed like a wonderful idea after the vile discovery of the night before and the oppressive crush of Umbridge's sentencing. Ginny swung their loosely joined hands as they began their walk home.

"Do you think I did the right thing? With Umbridge?" he asked her after they had descended the hill in companionable silence.

"I think you were brilliant," Ginny assured at once. "I couldn't have done something like that," she added with real admiration.

"How do you mean?" asked Harry, who had long been of the opinion that Ginny thought she could do pretty much anything, and was usually right.

"It bothered her more that you acted like she doesn't even matter than it would have if you'd yelled at her. I couldn't have done that. I would have gone right for the Bat-Bogey hex." Ginny nodded firmly. "That would have been fun. Not as effective. But fun." She smiled reminiscently, but it wasn't her most beautiful smile; it was one with a hint of viciousness. "Not that it wasn't fun the way she _screamed_ when she really got that Teddy's more important than she is."

"I hope I did the right thing for Teddy."

Ginny shrugged. "What she did was disgusting. Why would he want to find out about that some day? It'll be bad enough not ever knowing his parents. I mean, you'd know that."

"I also know it was incredibly aggravating to have everyone who knew my parents protecting me from the truth about them. Everyone left stuff out, important stuff. You can't know why your parents died, we're protecting you. You can't know Sirius is your godfather, we're protecting you. You can't know that your father and godfather strutted around school bullying everyone who didn't worship them—though I've got to give Snape credit, he _tried_ to tell me that. That's a good one—I wonder how Remus and Sirius decided not to tell me Snape and my Mum were best friends until they were fifteen. Especially Remus, after Snape killed Dumbledore. It's not like there was any way they didn't know. It's not like they forgot. Did they flip a coin? Heads, we tell Harry about Snape and Lily, tales we don't?"

This time, when Ginny smiled, it was her nice smile with no meanness. "I think it's more likely that they stood somewhere a bit like here, and looked at each other a bit like you're looking at me, and said 'I hope I did the right thing for Harry.'"

There wasn't much else to be said after that, so they walked back to the Burrow, each thinking of Remus. If there were tears in both of their cheeks, neither made any comment.

* * *

**Next Chapter: **_Tonks is tongue-tied. Sirius gossips. Andromeda worries. _

_Thank you for the reviews!_

**Responses to Reviews:**

**Of course, a little fluffy bit of a chapter isn't too much, right? **

_Well, it is in this chapter. But there should be some Harry and Teddy fluff…somewhere…eventually._

**Harry saw Remus's body at Hogwarts, why's he doubting he's dead now?**

_After this chapter, he isn't. Earlier, it was a combination of wishful thinking and remembering that other people who were thought to be dead turned out to be alive. Harry also saw Dumbledore die, and then doubted when he saw Aberforth's eye in the mirror._


	12. Past Plan

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

The world had been so bizarre for so long that Andromeda was almost able to take it in stride when Harry announced that he had found Remus' body, had delivered it to the appropriate funeral home so it could be placed beneath the gravestone that bore his name, and had reported a purveyor of illegally obtained corpses to the proper authorities after removing the corpse that concerned them.

The two of them took Teddy to see the coffin containing his father's remains lowered into the ground early in the morning and made plans for a memorial service to be held later that day for both Remus and Nymphadora.

For all that it was planned and scheduled at the last minute, memorial service was better-attended than any Andromeda had ever seen, with the exception of Dumbledore's funeral. There were scores of former students, colleagues, and admirers as well as friends. From the corner of her eye, Andromeda noticed that Narcissa and her husband and son were lurking well away from the rest of the mourners, but clearly observing the proceedings. One by one, half a dozen Aurors (not to mention Harry) quietly approached and offered to remove the family of Death Eaters from the memorial of two members of the Order of the Phoenix. Andromeda waved off their concerns. She couldn't bring herself to care what Narcissa did.

Those present wrote in a large book not only that they had attended, but messages that they wanted Teddy to read about his parents when he was old enough. Dozens of speeches were made; all speakers had been asked to be as lighthearted as possible under the circumstances.

It was beautiful as memorial services went, which was to say it wasn't beautiful at all.

When condolences had been accepted, speeches had been applauded, and most of the mourners were drifting off to continue reminiscing over bottles of mead in favorite pubs, Andromeda Apparated back to her home.

Harry followed an instant later carrying the memory book and a toy Teddy had dropped..

"I'll get out of your way unless there's anything you'd like me to do," he told her quietly.

She meant to thank him and send him on his way, but that wasn't what she said.

"I started dreading this the day she became an Auror. And from the day she showed up in my kitchen and told me she'd joined the Order of the Phoenix, I felt like I was on borrowed time."

X

Nymphadora had been in and out of their house at least five times a day since the news had come out that a student had died at Hogwarts—the first death at the school in half a century—and that Headmaster Dumbledore was blaming the death on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Dumbledore's proclamation had been met with mass skepticism, but Nymphadora was sure that Dumbledore spoke the truth the way only Nymphadora could be sure of a thing. Her professional mentor, Alastor Moody, was confined to a hospital bed and recovering from torture at the hands of a Death Eater. Nymphadora, from a mix of genuine respect and a shadow of guilt for not having realized that Moody had been captured and impersonated, had needed little encouragement to follow Moody's lead to Dumbledore's side.

For someone who stayed out of the ongoing struggle between Light and Dark as much as she could, Andromeda knew quite a lot about what it meant to be on Dumbledore's side—or Voldemort's. If Nymphadora _had_ to take a stand, at least she was taking the correct one.

(It wasn't that Andromeda wasn't proud of her daughter's skills, courage, and intellect— she was somewhere far beyond proud. But, selfishly, every so often, she wished her daughter would have done something safe and easy. That had never been a wish destined to be granted. Nymphadora preferred dangerous and difficult.)

One day, Nymphadora bounced into her parents' house, tripped over an end table, set it upright, and sat down so that her face was inches from her mother's. Her eyes flashed beneath her shockingly pink hair.

"Guess what?"

"You've decided it would be a good idea to test your morphing skills by replicating someone else's body and running across the Quidditch Pitch stark naked?" Andromeda guessed, as she inevitably did.

"Mum! That was _one_ time, and I was _eleven_."

"I'm glad to hear that's still only the one time," said Andromeda with a show of relief. "I don't ever want to get another owl about you like that one from Professor Sprout."

"You know I've joined the Order of the Phoenix," Nymphadora carried on determinedly. She hadn't formally announced as much, what with the Order of the Phoenix technically being a secret society. It had nonetheless been obvious. Andromeda recognized the signs. She had seen them in Sirius during the last war, before Sirius had had a change of heart that had once seemed impossible.

"I'm proud of you, and terrified."

A tiny modicum of bounce dribbled out of Nymphadora, and she came as close to sitting still as she ever did. "I'll take care of myself. And the others will take care of me."

"I don't doubt your ability, Nymphadora, but I remember what the mortality rate of the Order was when you were a child and your cousin Sirius used to come over here and tell me what was going on—and I'm sure he didn't tell me the half of it."

Nymphadora's dark eyes sparkled with renewed vigor. "That's what I wanted to tell you. Sirius says hello."

Andromeda dropped the book she'd been holding. "Sirius does?" she managed as her head stopped spinning. Sirius had made a well-publicized escape from prison two years before, and Andromeda was more surprised than she should have been to learn that he was, apparently, back with the Order.

Nymphadora waited for her mother to get her bearings and then raced on. "Mum, he never betrayed the Potters, never. Harry Potter is his godson and he loves him so much, hardly ever talks about anything else except how much he hates—" She broke off in a strangled gag.

"Are you all right?" asked Andromeda urgently.

Nymphadora's head bobbed up and down in the affirmative.

"Are you choking?"

She shook her head in the negative. She regained her breath an instant later. "Sorry. I got a little too close to classified information."

Andromeda breathed more easily, too. Now that Nymphadora mentioned it, she recognized the effects of a well-cast Fidelius Charm. "But apparently the fact that you're working with Sirius Black, convicted mass murderer and prison escapee, is not classified?"

"I think it is for some people, but since he's my cousin and he wanted me to give you his love, it isn't for me."

"So Sirius is… lucid?" Andromeda asked more tentatively than she would have liked. Nymphadora was an adult, and a skilled Auror as well, but Andromeda still preferred not to crumble into a heap of terror and regret in front of her daughter. It was upsetting to see your parents lose control at any age—or Andromeda thought it must be. She had been seventeen when she had last spoken to her parents.

Nymphadora responded to her mother's fears faster than Andromeda could voice them. She scrambled to Andromeda's side, upsetting a vase of flowers in the process, and gave her mother a hug. "He's not mad. He knew who I was as soon as he saw me, laughed and asked if I remembered how he used to use me to flirt with witches when I was a baby and he was watching me—I probably wasn't meant to repeat that."

"That's not news," Andromeda assured wryly.

"He's a lot like I remembered him. He's clever and quick and has such a great sense of humor. The dementors didn't get that. He says he thinks, and Dumbledore agrees that this is probably it, that he didn't go mad because he was put in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and that's not a happy thought so the dementors couldn't take it or his identity."

Even in the embrace of her obviously ecstatic daughter, Andromeda's fear for Nymphadora redoubled even as it was forced aside by a rush of guilt and anger for Sirius. "You're saying he was tortured for twelve years, and he was innocent? And none of the people who were supposed to love him questioned—"

"No, no, no," Nymphadora rushed to interrupt. "Well, yes, but Remus Lupin told Sirius to make sure tell me to make sure to tell you not to feel sorry for him, or guilty about that. He resents the fools in the Ministry who didn't give him a trial and stopped any inquiries about it, but not you or Remus or anyone else. He knows why everyone accepted that he was guilty that with everything going on and with all the evidence against him, and he wants you to know he's fine now."

"He's fine?" asked Andromeda dubiously.

"Well, worried about Harry Potter. Basically all the time. And since he's wanted, Dumbledore's said he's not to leave headquarters, and of all the place—" She broke off in another gag, as if her tongue had been tied.

"Nymphadora, I do not want to know where Order headquarters is," Andromeda scolded. Even as she waited for her daughter to recover the use of her voice, she realized that her brilliant Nymphadora, the only person who had been accepted into the exclusive Auror program in many years, had already revealed highly classified information. Order headquarters would have to be well-hidden, well-protected, and provided by a trusted member, presumably someone who had been in the Order the first time around. It was somewhere that made Sirius unhappy; somewhere he hated.

Dumbledore's secret society was headquartered at the ancestral Black home at Grimmauld Place.

There was a certain delicious irony to it. Andromeda might have laughed had she not been so consumed by the steady ache of fear for her daughter's life and the mind-blowing knowledge that her escaped convict of a cousin was stalking around Grimmauld Place telling amusing stories about Nymphadora as a baby.

"Well, Sirius is aggravated that he's not going to be allowed to collect Harry Potter and bring him back to school. I am—I can't wait to meet him. Remus and Sirius can't stop talking about how wonderful he is. Did you know Remus Lupin?"

"Not well, but he and Sirius were mates in school so our paths crossed. I remember him. How do you like him?"

"A lot." She smiled. "Sometimes I could do without his sense of humor. But I like everyone in the Order. I know I made the right decision when I joined." A note of pleading entered her voice.

"I know you did, too," Andromeda whispered. "But you can't blame me for wishing that wasn't so."

X

"But you never actually saw Sirius after he was sent to Azkaban?" Harry asked, a bit sadly. Sometimes it seemed like no one ever got enough time with their families, whether those families had been formed by blood or choice. But how else was he supposed to feel after yet another memorial service?

To Harry's shock, Andromeda's eyes sparkled the way her daughter's often had. "Did Sirius ever strike you as someone who liked to follow rules?"

"Of course not." The question was ridiculous, barely worth answering, but Sirius had been so patently miserable during the last year of his life that Harry had taken it for granted that he had obeyed Dumbledore's command to stay put in his childhood home.

"There you have it," said Andromeda, as if that explained it all. Her glinting eyes suddenly misted. "He was the one who told me about Remus and Nymphadora. He never did make much of an acquaintance with discretion."

"Did he do that often? Visit you, not gossip about Remus and Tonks, I mean."

"It was only once. Late autumn of that year."

X

Andromeda hadn't expected any visitors, so all of the safety precautions Nymphadora and the other Aurors had carefully set up were activated and functioning. Ted was at work, and Nymphadora hadn't been home for several days. Nymphadora had gotten rid of her private flat and gone back to staying with her parents when she wasn't on duty or staying at Order headquarters. Andromeda wasn't sure what disturbed her most: the thought of Nymphadora performing dangerous duties as an Auror; the thought of Nymphadora performing dangerous duties for Dumbledore; or the thought of Nymphadora living part-time at Grimmauld Place.

As much pleasure as Andromeda took in having Nymphadora back in her childhood bedroom a night or two each week, not a moment passed that she didn't despise the reason for this gift. All of her friends and neighbors and colleagues doubted that You-Know-Who had returned. Andromeda didn't doubt; she couldn't doubt when her fun-loving daughter suddenly viewed her as an innocent to be guarded instead of a parent who had burdened her with a name she hated.

When the invasion detectors signaled her that someone else had entered the house despite their many precautions, she thought that it was most likely that Ted or Nymphadora had forgotten to disable the detectors properly. Still, her heart beat hard and fast. "Who's there?"

A voice, hoarser that she remembered it but still achingly familiar, answered. "Sirius Black."

She came down the stairs with her wand raised. He had been well worn by the years that had passed since she'd last seen him. There were lines on his face and a hollowness in his eyes. But still, he was a far cry from the filthy, painfully thin wreck of a wizard who had lately appeared on so many "wanted" posters. He smiled a bit when he saw her, even though she pointed her wand directly at his heart.

"If you're Sirius, tell me when I told you I was going to marry Ted."

"The first time you told me you were dating was at the Lestranges' wedding reception." He made a face. "When you told me you were getting married for a fact, it was the day of, and you wanted me to sneak you out of Hogwarts, which I did." She nodded, painfully. "When did I tell you I wasn't going to be Sorted into Slytherin?"

"That day that the future Mrs. Lestrange taught you the Cruciatus Curse, wasn't it? Right before Christmas. I haven't thought about that in twenty years."

He hadn't even nodded his acknowledgement that she was indeed Andromeda Tonks, nee Andromeda Black, before she'd crossed the room and thrown her arms around him.

Andromeda had never been overly demonstrative. She was affectionate with her husband and daughter, of course, but in many ways she was following their cues. Blacks didn't throw themselves into each other's arms with wild abandon. While she'd loved Sirius, during their young adulthood she hadn't been able see him without being reminded that she had once been a Black.

She felt Sirius start briefly before he returned the hug and pressed a kiss into her hair for good measure.

"Nymphadora told me what you were up to," she murmured when they'd released one another. "I didn't expect to see you, though."

Behind the shadows in his eyes there was a bemused glint of mischief which she recognized all too well. It threatened to move her to tears. "Technically, I'm not supposed to be here."

Andromeda forced her face into an expression of mock astonishment. "And you were always such a well-behaved child, never breaking rules or causing trouble."

"I suppose I've fallen from grace, then," he said, and she wasn't sure he was entirely joking. She laughed anyway.

"Sit," she said, pointing at the chairs surrounding the kitchen table. Sirius immediately slouched into a chair and kicked it back onto two legs. It was a petty form of rebellion he had never lost; proper posture had been heavily emphasized in their early education, and by his teenage years Sirius had made certain not to give their family even the small satisfaction of letting them see him sit upright.

(Andromeda, though, had passed the posture lessons on to her daughter. Nymphadora, for all her gifts, simply lacked the physical grace to be permitted to balance her chair on two legs the way Sirius liked to. She would have split her head open.)

"What are you doing here, Sirius?" she asked when she had put drinks and biscuits on the table.

"Nice to see you, too," he said with a melodramatic flair, somehow managing to balance the chair in an even more precarious position.

"It's wonderful to see you, but you aren't meant to be out of Order headquarters, are you?"

His face darkened so quickly and completely that if she hadn't already guessed the location of the secret headquarters, she would have done it right then. "I needed a break, and I successfully bribed your daughter into covering for me."

So that was how he'd known exactly how to get into the house. "What's Nymphadora getting in exchange for this?"

As quickly as the dark look had come, it vanished. It was replaced by all-consuming amusement which was just as frightening in its own way. "Why, sweet little Nymphadora gets time alone with my _former_ mate Remus! There were a couple of tips on likes and dislikes and potential topics of conversation thrown in as well."

"Your _former_ mate?"

"I don't have any beautiful young witches half my age chasing after me, so I've had to chuck Remus out of jealousy. He hasn't had time to mind, though, he's too busy pretending he isn't returning all those looks your daughter is pretending not to throw him."

Andromeda's amusement mingled with disappointment. "Nymphadora didn't mention that anything like that was going on."

"That's because, officially, nothing is going on. But the way she flirts with Remus is shameful. It's almost as bad as the way Remus flirts with her."

"Very well," said Andromeda, now that she had a better idea of the situation. "Tell me everything you know about Remus."

"That would take all day, and would either disturb you or bore you to tears."

Andromeda glared playfully at her long-lost cousin, who was getting far too much pleasure out of knowing things she wanted to know. "This is my only daughter we're talking about."

Sirius grinned. "Moony is a perfect gentleman. He's such a perfect gentleman that the only way this will ever go anywhere is if your daughter hits him over the head and drags him back to her cave."

"Sirius!"

"Since I've obviously scandalized you, I should get out of your home while you recover." The four legs of the chair hit the ground.

"Stay where you are!"

Sirius pretended to consider his options, and then softened. "Other than Harry, there's no one in the world I love more than Remus. He's everything you could want for your daughter if you can overlook the amusing but not hideously inappropriate age difference and the bloodthirsty monster one night a month thing."

_Bloodthirsty monster_. Somehow, in the excitement of Sirius' unexpected appearance and his news about her daughter's new romantic entanglement, Andromeda had managed to forget that Remus Lupin was a werewolf. "My daughter has a crush on a werewolf."

"One night a month, Anna," said Sirius gently, almost pleadingly. "The rest of the time he's all reserved and proper and practical. He doesn't even raise his voice if he can avoid it. We've been friends since we were eleven years old and he never so much told me to sit down and shut up until after Azkaban."

"It _would_ take the patience of a saint never to tell you to shut up," Andromeda mused.

"It would. Look, I know you and Ted aren't the exclusionist, judgmental types. But when most people hear _werewolf_, it's a bit of a shock and they don't even think about the individual. So I'm warning you now, and if anything ever comes of it, you can be over the shock. If you or Ted ever said anything about not approving, Remus would back off and never even look at her again, regardless of what there was between them. Liking and loving other people is the one place where he's… not the bravest, not that I blame him. I wanted you to have a chance to think about it before you have to say anything to her, or to him."

"You suspect this will turn into something serious."

"It's my instinct. And with a war about to break out and everything that goes along with that…" He shrugged.

Andromeda closed her eyes. "So you think You-Know-Who really is back, too."

"There's no doubt in my mind. He's back, and the _Daily Prophet_ calling my godson a nutter on a daily basis doesn't change it."

"How's your godson doing?"

"Angry. But so am I, so it all works out."

In spite of herself, she smiled at Sirius' obvious devotion to his godchild. "You really love him."

"So much it's terrifying."

"Welcome to the club. Be glad yours is at Hogwarts and not out on patrol when she's not flirting with a werewolf."

"See? The werewolf thing isn't so bad when you think she could be flirting with Voldemort."

"That does throw a lot into perspective," Andromeda admitted. Then she steeled herself to ask a question that had been at the back of her mind since Sirius' sudden appearance. "Speaking of witches who like to flirt with Voldemort, did you see Mrs. Lestrange in Azkaban?"

Sirius nodded like he had known this was coming. "I couldn't see her. I could hear her. She stayed coherent for years. The same thing that helped me might have helped her—thinking that she was innocent."

"She wasn't born innocent."

"She's a true believer and she preferred Azkaban to living without Voldemort. If she can harness all that crazy that runs in the family instead of trying to suppress it like I do, it might help her."

"You aren't crazy!" Andromeda objected.

"Half the members of the Order think I'm touched, and I don't blame them. And it _does_ run in the family, so they may be right. The Blacks always were a good argument against inbreeding." He rushed on before Andromeda could reiterate her faith in his mental stability. "But the dementors are in the process of going over to Voldemort. Sooner or later, there's going to be a mass breakout from Azkaban, and the Lestranges are going to be right at Voldemort's side."

"And she's going to want to make Nymphadora her first murder of the second war." Andromeda buried her face in her shaking hands.

"Anna, Anna, she knows what she's doing. I've seen her at her job and she's brilliant, and you know the Auror program only takes the best of the best. Everyone in the Order knows exactly who we're up against, and we all know to do a little extra watching out when it comes to Tonks and Mrs. Lestrange. Do you really imagine I'd stand there and let your daughter get finished off if it does come down to a battle?"

Andromeda made an effort to control herself. "Of course not. But I hope for all of you—all of us— that it never comes to that."

Sirius met her eyes. "We all hope that."

X

"Knowing something's coming doesn't make it easier, does it?" said Harry with the air of someone who knew exactly what he was talking about.

"No," Andromeda agreed. "It doesn't."

* * *

**Next Chapter: **_Harry's contemplation of Voldemort's Quidditch preferences makes a bad day out of a good one. _

_Thank you for the reviews!_

**Auxiliary Disclaimer: **_Sirius stole a (slightly modified) line from Oscar Wilde's __The Importance of Being Ernest __in the second flashback: "My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolyn is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolyn flirts with you."_

**Responses to Reviews:**

**Do wizards even have freezers? You know, technology-wise. **

_I think they must have a magical equivalent(cooling charm on a box?) to what Muggles have that uses electricity, especially since food can't be conjured out of nothing. Florean Fortescue has to keep his ice cream somewhere that it won't melt and it won't attract animals and bugs, right? Why not stick everything that needs to stay cool in one place rather than put a separate charm on anything that will go bad if left at room temperature?_

**How long is your story going to be? **

_The original plan was 16 chapters. I don't know how closely I'll stick to that._

**Why is the word 'Snitch' in the title of the story? Goblin and Werewolf I can understand, but Snitch...? Is it because of the Quidditch game he lost earlier on?**

_More Snitch in the next chapter, but yes, it is because of the way his Quidditch-playing is going. And because I wanted the rhythm of the title to echo __The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe__. I never especially liked CS Lewis and I very much like the Potterverse, but my first read of __Deathly Hallows__ reminded me of the Narnia novels (in that I felt lectured on a few occasions), so it was on my mind when I titled and outlined this fic._

**Will Harry tell the Ministry about the body parts?**

_He did. Thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't thought about it._

**Is it all that wrong? Not in the way that it is done, but in the donor way. Say a werewolf, or a merperson decided that they would donate their body after death to be used in potions that serve to cure the living of disease? Of course, consent is the main thing there…**

_I agree with you. If someone wants to donate his own body to science, that's noble. If someone steals and desecrates a corpse for profit and punishment, not so noble._


	13. Present Fight

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

Ron and Hermione were kissing again, and while Harry thought his friends more than deserved a little happiness, there were moments when he painfully missed the days when the three of them were a trio and nothing else. In those moments, even the knowledge that, finally, he could date Ginny without the specter of Voldemort hanging over their heads didn't quite assuage the pain.

It happened that Harry was having one of those moments when a sleek gray owl soared up to him where he sat under a tree near the Burrow and dropped a note into his lap.

_Harry—_

_Just a reminder._

_Quidditch today!_

_You are still coming, right?_

_And bring Ginny Weasley! We still need her at Chaser._

—_Oliver Wood_

He hadn't even remembered that there was another Quidditch match scheduled for that day; he must have forgotten during the upset over Remus' body and the ensuing memorial service. It was hardly an unpleasant surprise, however.

He found Ginny in George's room, working hard at making her brother smile and having limited success. He hesitated in the doorway; what Ginny was doing was more important than whether Wood had to find someone else to fill out his roster.

Ginny and George had already noticed him by the time he was considering leaving, so he handed the note to Ginny. George read it over her shoulder.

"Oh, yeah, Lee mentioned something about that," George said casually. "He's going to commentate for Wizarding Wireless. He told someone how much he used to like to do it at Hogwarts, so they decided to broadcast him. As far as they're concerned he can do no wrong—everyone loves him after Potterwatch. We sold every recording of that we had at the store the day he came into sign autographs. We're making more—backorders."

"They're broadcasting this game? And I'm playing?" Ginny asked eagerly. "How could you not mention that?"

George shrugged. "I didn't think it was that big a deal."

"Except for Harry and me, everyone there is a professional, or was and retired. Scouts from all the teams are going to hear it. If it's been announced, they might even be there! George!" She shoved him playfully on the shoulder. "I want all the teams fighting over me after I leave school next year."

George raised an eyebrow. "You're _not_ playing professional Quidditch. Mum won't have it."

"Just like you _weren't_ going to open a joke shop, Mum wouldn't have that, either," she returned, jumping to her feet. "Get your broom, I'll meet you outside, Harry."

They arrived at the Pitch well in advance of the predetermined starting time, but not soon enough for Wood, who was pacing anxiously back and forth as they approached.

"I thought you were lost," he told them brusquely. "Or that you weren't taking this seriously."

Harry glanced at Ginny, expecting her to make one of the jokes Fred and George always had when Wood accused them of not taking Quidditch seriously enough. Instead, her brown eyes blazed and she gripped her broom more tightly. Harry noticed that it was the broom she had taken from George's shop the day they'd retrieved Remus' body. The letter "F" was emblazoned in gold near the tail.

"We're taking this seriously," Ginny said. There was no sarcasm in her tone. "We haven't had much time to train, but we're ready to go."

"Good." Wood seemed more than slightly relieved. "Let's talk about attack formations. And you," he added to Harry, "make sure we don't need them."

"He can't miss the Snitch twice," Ginny told Wood. "I mean, he won't."

The other Chasers, as well as the Beaters, appeared, and they began a discussion of strategy that didn't especially affect Harry, so he didn't especially listen. He glanced at Fabian Prewett's watch. The sooner the match started, the sooner it would be over.

That thought gave Harry pause. He loved flying, and he loved Quidditch. Playing conditions were perfect and he'd be playing with Ginny. Since when did he wish for a match to be over before it began?

It didn't matter. The game began, and with it, Lee's introductions of the players, which Harry could hear through a tiny radio attached to his robes. Although this match had more of an official flavor than the previous one, Lee had not been granted permission to amplify his voice in an area that wasn't properly inaccessible to Muggles.

"…The third Chaser, Ginny Weasley, is only sixteen years old and is one of two players on the Pitch who has never played professionally. Her brother Charlie Weasley was once expected to play Seeker for England, but he decided it would be safer to take a job brushing dragons' teeth.

"And playing Seeker, no one important, so let's not get into it."

Harry laughed, and felt his mood improve slightly.

Ginny scored, then the other team scored, then Ginny scored again. Sixteen years old or not, out of practice or not, Ginny played as well as anyone else on the Pitch. There was no question that she would be able to begin professional play the next year if that was what she wanted. Harry had never heard her mention that as a goal before, but he couldn't remember ever having asked her what she wanted to do after school. Perhaps he had always been too caught up in the drama surrounding his destiny with Voldemort to pay proper attention to any of the people he loved.

He saw the Snitch, reached for it, closed the fingers of his left hand around it, and looked again at his watch. The match had lasted less than a quarter-hour. He had felt no anticipation, elation, or ecstasy. In fact, he felt actively bored at the prospect of taking a victory lap and showing the spectators (more numerous than last time) the Snitch he held tightly in his hand. He had gotten more enjoyment out of Quidditch back when he'd been worried that Voldemort himself might appear from nowhere and attack them all. He'd gotten more enjoyment out of Quidditch when his scar pulsed so that he thought his head might split open at any moment.

He'd lost a part of himself when he'd lost the fragment of Voldemort's soul that had once clung to his own soul. Perhaps he'd lost the part that enjoyed Quidditch along with the part that talked to snakes and the part that had visions? How could he be certain that _Voldemort_ hadn't been the one who loved Quidditch?

The thought made him feel tired rather than angry.

His lethargy evaporated when he heard a crackling sound quickly followed by a shout. Quickly, he took in the strange sight of Wood pinning Ginny's arms to her sides as several other players huddled around a witch who had played Beater for the other team.

"Did you hex her?" Harry asked as he rushed to Ginny's side.

"She needed hexing," Ginny told him matter-of-factly.

"Why?" Ginny had hexed Zacharias Smith after their last match, and at school she had once flown her broom straight into the commentators' stand, but that had been Zacharias, too. Then there had been that incident at Collin Creevey's funeral, but Fred had only been dead for a few days and she'd been provoked. She didn't usually spontaneously hex people.

Ginny scoffed, but settled down enough that Wood released his grip and moved away with a "good luck" kind of glance at Harry.

"Why did she need hexing?" Harry repeated.

"She was annoying," Ginny said loftily.

"Annoying how?"

"She kept saying that it was nice the way the other Chasers set me up and let me score the goals."

"And that's it?"

"It was more annoying when she did it." Ginny grinned. Harry didn't grin back.

"Ginny, you can't hex people just because they're annoying. It was one thing when it was Zac—on second thought, you can't hex anyone just for being annoying. Not even Zacharias Smith."

"I don't hex him because he's annoying. With him, it's more that he exists."

Harry wasn't sure what it was about Ginny's excuse that twisted his concern into anger. All he knew was that he realized he was about to lose his temper but wasn't sure how to stop it. "For Merlin's sake, do you even get that we just got through having a war over whether or not it's all right to attack someone because you're annoyed that he _exists_?"

"Did you just compare me to a Death Eater?"

"Did you just hex someone you don't even know because she might have implied that you didn't score those goals without help, which happens to be true?"

"I hexed her because of what she said, not because of who her parents are! There's a big difference between me and a Death Eater!"

"Not big enough, lately," Harry said, but before he had time to be sorry, Ginny was flushed and angry and inches from his face.

"Well, I guess when you're the Chosen One, everyone else looks like a Death Eater."

"I never—"

"No one else is ever perfect enough for you, are they? You stuck your head in Snape's Pensieve and found out Sirius liked a laugh when he was in school, and he fell off the pedestal you had him on, and that was it, right? And Hermione told me how you were when you read Rita Skeeter's rubbish about Dumbledore, you started blaming Dumbledore right off without knowing the whole story. And when Remus—the first time he disappointed you, you went right to calling him a coward, didn't even try to understand first. But, hey, you're the Chosen One—"

"Don't call me—"

"So you know that everyone else pales in comparison to you. No one else can ever be as pure as you are." She flipped her long hair in his face and stormed away. Harry followed her. "I don't want to talk to you, and I don't want to go home with you. Demelza is here. I'm going with her and I'll Floo home later. I wouldn't want to mar your perfect flying by being my Death Eater self anywhere near you."

"Fine," said Harry, not to anyone in particular, since Ginny had grabbed Demelza Robins (who Harry hadn't seen before, but who was there after all) by the arm and was already halfway across the Pitch.

He had never thought about what would happen if he and Ginny had a row; they usually didn't have them. Sometimes, they even whispered to each other that Ron and Hermione fought enough for all of them. But if Ron and Hermione fought now, Hermione could go visit her parents. She was going back and forth between their home and the Burrow several times a week anyway. But Harry didn't have parents, or much of anywhere to go besides Ginny's parents' home.

He hadn't had much experience with dating, but he was fairly sure you weren't supposed to sleep in your girlfriend's parents' house and let your girlfriend's mother cook your meals when you'd just had your first major fight—_even if the fight wasn't my fault_, he thought sulkily. He hadn't called Ginny a Death Eater, not really, and he had been right about hexing people, too. Ginny was small and young, but her hexes were so powerful that even Fred and George had avoided them for years, so powerful that Professor Slughorn had invited her into his collection of favorite students instead of giving her detention. It _wasn't_ all right for her to attack people who said something she didn't like.

If he had been dating any other girl, he might have told Ron what had happened, and Ron would have taken his part. But Ginny was Ron's sister, so it was different. He scowled and Apparated back to the Burrow.

Harry found the door of Ron's room shut. He flung it open without knocking and found Ron and Hermione lying on Ron's bed together (clothed, at least) and not looking like they wanted to be disturbed.

Ron started to protest Harry's unannounced entrance, but stopped when he saw the expression on Harry's face. "What happened?" he asked, trying hard not to look flustered.

Harry was too busy Summoning the collection of belongings he had acquired since Voldemort's death into a bag to care about the awkwardness of interrupting Ron and Hermione.

"Where are you going?" Hermione tried.

"Somewhere that isn't here," Harry told her, since he hadn't really decided.

"Did you and Ginny have a fight?"

Harry didn't feel like telling Hermione she was right, and definitely didn't feel like having Hermione tell him that Ginny hadn't been entirely at fault, so he didn't answer. "See you at the Hogwarts cleanup party on Monday," he said instead.

"That's in three days—" Hermione began, but Harry shut the door behind him.

"Go back to what you were doing," he called over his shoulder.

X

His first instinct was to Apparate to Hogwarts, the first home he had ever had, but now Hogwarts was where Remus and Tonks and Fred and so many others had died. Besides, it was the middle of summer and Hogwarts wasn't fully repaired yet (hence the party he intended to attend on Monday). He was no longer a student there, anyway.

His second instinct, which he followed, was to Apparate to Diagon Alley. Once there, he took a room in the Leaky Cauldron as he had done at the beginning of his third year, the last time he'd been homeless but not on the run. Escaping the Weasleys felt much worse than escaping the Dursleys, especially since now he had thought about the Dursleys, which he hadn't done for weeks. He flinched at the memory that the Dursley family would soon be expanding, even though it seemed like Dudley wanted to do the best he could for the new baby.

He settled into his room thinking that he'd just have to be careful to avoid George's shop. As soon as George's shop came to mind, though, he wanted to go there.

Harry smirked. He had a way around that. "Kreacher?" he asked the empty room, feeling slightly foolish.

The house-elf appeared out of nowhere and gave Harry a bow. The locket that had once belonged to Regulus Black still dangled around his neck, but Kreacher was careful not to let it touch the floor. "What is you wanting, Master?"

"First, I wanted to make sure you were still happy working at Hogwarts."

"It is to Kreacher's liking, unless Master would prefer that Kreacher work somewhere else."

"No, I want you to stay there if you're happy. But before you go back," he fumbled in his hastily packed bag for a handful of galleons, "will you go to Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes' and buy me one of their fake rabbits? And to the Post Office to get an owl large enough to carry it?"

Kreacher stood straight as an arrow, looking almost ready to salute. "Yes, Sir! Anything else?"

Harry shook his head. "Thank you, Kreacher."

There was a crack, and Kreacher was gone.

Harry sat on his bed and realized that his hands were clenched into fists. With effort, he unclenched them. Something small and feathered brushed against his left hand. He had never let go of the Snitch, which now fluttered freely around the room.

Harry ignored it and fumbled through his bag in search of parchment, quill, and ink. By the time Kreacher returned, he had almost finished his letter.

_Dudley—_

_I know you said your baby was going to be born around now, and I thought he or she might like this for a present. My godson has one. It's magical, but you can probably tell anyone who asks that it runs on a computer chip or something. _

_Congratulations again._

—_Harry_

He fastened the package containing the rabbit and the note to the owl's leg, and the owl flew out the window moments after Kreacher vanished again.

Harry felt very alone.

"I must be lonely if I'm writing to Dudley," he said out loud.

Harry dug through his bag again, thinking vaguely of looking around the Alley from beneath his Invisibility Cloak, when his fingers found a smooth, cool box.

_Potterwatch: The Complete Broadcasts _stared up at him.

As if in a trance, Harry opened the box and set it to play the first broadcast. Lee's familiar voice filled the room as Harry lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

"You've found us! Congratulations on having a brain and good taste, and welcome to the very first broadcast of Potterwatch. My name is River.

"Lately, I've been finding it harder and harder to get real information about what's going on in this nasty fight between You-Know-Who and anyone who has any sense of decency. That's why I'm going to share what I do learn with you. We all have to fight this fight together. Most of us think that Harry Potter has the power to get rid of You-Know-Who. That's why the show is called Potterwatch, people. But he can't do it alone. We all have to do our bit.

"The first announcement I have to make is of great importance to Harry himself, if he's listening, and to some of the others who like to stand up to You-Know-Who. If you've ever met Harry, you know he doesn't like to say 'You-Know-Who.' He'd rather call the slime by his name. But Harry mustn't do that any longer, and neither can any of his friends who do the same thing. We've recently learned that You-Know-Who and his cronies have put a taboo on his name. If you say his name, his cronies will be able to Apparate to wherever you are and attack you. They've been using this tactic to track down the leaders of the resistance.

"So we encourage the leaders of the resistance, and everyone else, to mind the taboo.

"But we at Potterwatch don't like to be told what to call someone, so we won't be calling him You-Know-Who any longer. We'll just call him the Chief Death Eater, because, folks, that's all he is. He's the biggest bully in a band of bullies, and we're going to stand together and fight the lot of them.

"I have two special guests with me tonight, and I don't mean special just because they happen to be incredibly attractive witches who can be on my show any time they like. They're special because they know a thing or two that might put you at ease. First, I know a lot of you out there have children or friends or someone you care about at Hogwarts. The lovely, lovely Athena has managed to stumble across some inside information about what's been going on at the school. Welcome, Athena."

"Thank you, River."

On his bed in the Leaky Cauldron, Harry snorted with laughter as he imagined the expression on Professors McGonagall's face as Lee introduced her as "the lovely Athena." A painful sense of loss tightened in his chest. He wished he had heard this when it had first been broadcast. Not only might the information about the taboo have saved him a bit of trouble, but he couldn't measure how reassuring it would have been to hear Professor McGonagall promising to protect Ginny, Neville, Luna, and the others who would have been inside the castle at that time.

"Athena, may I say you look particularly stunning tonight," Lee began ingratiatingly. "It's unfortunate that our listeners can't see you in all your glory."

"Thank you," said Professor McGonagall drily.

"I know that a lot of our listeners are concerned about their children attending a school where the headmaster is a turncoat Death Eater who never washes his hair. So, first of all, tell us if it's true that Severus Snape has banned shampoo from the castle."

"That is incorrect, River. The students are still permitted and encouraged to wash their hair."

"Good news for all of us. What about changes to the curriculum? Is it true that there's a new class dedicated to Muggle-hating?"

"Most of the instructors have taught for many years at Hogwarts, and find it… difficult to immediately alter their teaching regimens with each new regime. Likewise, many students are understandably hesitant to accept a new line of study without question, and are intelligent enough to give various topics exactly the weight they deserve."

"It's been rumored that several of those students you mentioned broke into the Headmaster's office in the hopes of providing him with a wardrobe that doesn't make him look like a bat, and he punished them by hanging them by their thumbs and having them whipped. True?"

"Also incorrect, River. Three students did attempt to steal a valuable artifact from the Headmaster's office. The punishment they received was, in my opinion, perfectly appropriate to the crime. I would have given a similar reprimand myself. The teachers at Hogwarts are attempting to create a safe environment for learning, as always."

"Excellent. Thank you for correcting my misassumptions, Athena."

"Always."

"And now, we have another guest almost as phenomenally attractive as Athena. This is Laura. Laura is a nice, normal name, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. I'm very relieved to be named Laura."

The knot in Harry's chest grew. He should have expected that Tonks had taken part in _Potterwatch_ at some point, but the sound of her voice still made him feel as if he wanted to explode and deflate simultaneously.

"Laura, you're an expert at fighting Death Eaters and Dark Magic. You've had training that would make most of us run in the other direction. What advice can you give to someone who just doesn't have your skills?"

"First of all, remember that this isn't necessarily about high-level skills and training. Sometimes the simplest things are the things that will save your life. Stun. Disarm. Put a protective spell on your home if you haven't already, and help out your neighbors if you can. Even if you feel silly asking someone to prove he is who he says he is, do it! Do it with your husband, do it with your mother. They love you and they understand why you're asking what you wanted for your birthday when you were six."

"That's good advice. And what do you have to say to those who are wondering if they and their families might be safer if they supported the Chief Death Eater?"

"First of all, I'd remind them that all of us are in this mess together, and that if you help out the Chief Death Eater, you're helping to destroy someone else's friend, husband, wife, parent, or child. Thank Merlin, I don't think most of us are cut out to do that. And if that isn't enough, I'd like to remind you that the Chief Death Eater does not believe in loyalty or forgiveness. Being 'on his side' is not going to stop him from killing you or torturing you. If I didn't like the name my mother gave me, I might joke about it on a radio program. The Chief Death Eater didn't like the name he got from his father, so he killed him."

"Really?" Lee wanted to know.

"Yes. That's absolutely true. The Chief Death Eater was a teenager when he killed his father. The Chief Death Eater has killed many of his followers who have displeased him in some way, or because he wanted to make a statement, or because he wanted something his follower had. When you're the Chief Death Eater, it doesn't matter who you kill. When you're like the rest of us, you forgive. You forgive the parent who gave you a ridiculous name and you remember to feel grateful that she has been right there with you every day since she gave you that name. You forgive the husband who panicked and did something that hurt you and you feel grateful that this wonderful person wants to be in your life. You forgive the friend who gave you an arse-kicking when you were being a git—and maybe you thank him, because you know you needed it. That's not how the Chief Death Eater thinks."

"So are you saying that you consider the Chief Death Eater a git who needs his arse kicked?" asked Lee.

"I thought that went without saying."

"And so it does, but we intend to say it from time to time anyway here on Potterwatch. Thank you, Athena and Laura, for being our first guests. The password next time is 'scar.'"

A moment later, the second broadcast began. Harry didn't stop the device from playing even though his ribs felt bruised and his eyes were burning. He didn't stop listening until the device shut itself off after several hours. Those several hours were filled with nasty jolts of recognition each time he heard Tonks' voice, or Remus', or Fred's. Neither Remus nor Tonks ever appeared on the show without making some kind of reference to the argument he and Remus had had in Grimmauld Place. They had gone to great lengths to assure him that all was well and he was forgiven, but hearing their words after their deaths only made Harry feel worse. It reminded him of an effective punishment Professor Snape had once devised for him that involved transcribing James' and Sirius' detention records.

Harry remembered that Sirius had sometimes dealt with his unhappiness with a bottle of Firewhiskey. It was perhaps not the most productive long-term coping mechanism, but just now Harry felt he understood the appeal. He wondered if the Leaky Cauldron would mind letting him have a bottle to take up to his room.

There was one way to find out. Harry dragged himself off the bed and over to the door. He had opened it just a crack when it flew backward forcefully and a heavy weight hit him in his chest. Long fingers fastened tightly about his wrists as he reached for his wand, and his senses blurred as something was held over his nose and mouth.

His last thought, as he lost consciousness, was that he really shouldn't have forgotten about the goblins.

* * *

**Next Chapter: **_Andromeda's past and Harry's future collide. _

_Thank you for the reviews! Thank you especially to Heart of the Phoenix and –EHWIES for answering my question about the Malfoys._

_No questions I can answer this time. I mean, I could answer them, but that would be telling. _


	14. Past Year

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

"MRS. TONKS? MRS. TONKS?"

Andromeda woke up hard. She always did. Once you lived through a war or two, you never awoke the way you had before. But today, her heart pounded harder than usual, her muscles clenched more tightly than usual, and her breath caught more harshly than usual. This might have been caused by the invader that had woken her.

A silvery, semi-solid otter was in her bedroom and speaking in the urgent voice of a young woman.

"MRS. TONKS? I'm sorry to wake you, if I did. My name is Hermione Granger and we've never met properly, only I know Harry's been spending a lot of time with you and Teddy lately. Harry Potter is my friend, but I can't find him and I can't reach him and if he's there or you know where he is or you saw him yesterday or today, please, please come to the Burrow or contact us there, please!"

The otter disappeared.

X

The talking Patronus gave Ted and Andromeda all of thirty seconds' warning. The immense, four-footed thing spoke hastily and frantically with their daughter's voice.

"Ministry fell. Scrimgeour dead. Remus and I are all right, but we won't contact you—hope that will keep them away."

Ted and Andromeda met each other's eyes warily and drew their wands. "Dora's all right. She knows how to take care of herself," Ted told Andromeda as he had told her many times before. He said the words as much to soothe himself as to soothe her, Andromeda knew. Nymphadora did know how to take care of herself, and Remus was no fool, either. But if the Ministry had fallen, there was no guarantee that knowing how to take care of herself would be enough.

"The wards will hold," Andromeda told Ted in her turn. Her assurances were just as empty. The Death Eaters knew by now that they had, for a few moments, harbored Harry Potter. They knew that Nymphadora and Remus were part of Dumbledore's inner circle of resistance fighters. If that was enough to make them one of the first targets, the wards would not hold.

There was an explosion much too close to the house.

Hastily, Andromeda began muttering incantations. She would take down the wards herself, to allow for Apparition, and they would vanish to—she would let Ted decide. He knew more Muggle places than she did, and the Muggle world seemed like the safest place to be.

As she felt the spell lift, Ted took her hand.

For a split second, Andromeda saw a Muggle street full of Muggle cars. She and Ted had made it.

Then she was thrown backwards so forcefully that she hit her head on the floor.

"Expeliarmus!"

She was too disoriented to block the spell; it wasn't until her wand was in her assailant's hand that she was able to see, through the stars that clouded her vision, that the ceiling above her was her own. The Death Eaters had re-formed the Apparition barrier just as she and Ted had tried to escape.

"CRUCIO!"

Pain drove all thoughts from her mind. She screamed. She didn't try to stop herself screaming; if her cries afforded the Death Eaters a little satisfaction, then perhaps the torture would end more quickly. The more quickly the torture ended, the more chance she and Ted would have to escape.

The curse lifted, and for the first time she was able to look at the half-dozen hooded figures. If her vision had had a chance to clear completely, she probably could have named them all. Mostly likely she had gone to school with them, or they had been friends of her parents. One of them might even be—

"CRUCIO!"

Bellatrix. She'd heard the voice properly that time.

"Tell us, you filthy blood traitor, where Harry Potter is?"

"I don't know."

"Cruc—"

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!" Her hysteria was only partly genuine. She had nothing to tell, but she had to sound as if she _would_ tell or she would never be believed.

"Crucio! What about your half-blooded oddity of a spawn? Where is she?"

"I don't know! I can't tell what I don't know! Please stop, stop, stop, stop!" By now she was beginning to feel embarrassed by her own pleading. Knowing that it was wise to let yourself be underestimated didn't make the groveling any less humiliating.

She heard an echo of _crucio_ from across the house. They had Ted, too; they were hurting him, too. She would rather have it said that she had died a coward than keep her upper lip stiff and let the assault on Ted continue because the Death Eater's weren't sure she knew nothing.

She screamed and kept screaming. "I don't know, they wouldn't tell us, I don't know, stop hurting us!"

"Pathetic," sneered one of the other Death Eaters. She didn't know his voice.

"Please," she whimpered. "Please."

"CRUCIO!"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

"They don't know anything!" cried a tall Death Eater who stood near the door. His voice was young, and Andromeda doubted that he was entirely comfortable with his decision to join You-Know-Who. "We're running out of time, people will have been warned. Let's get on to the next ones."

"I'm not done, you insolent whelp!" snapped Bellatrix.

"If the Dark Lord finds out you spent enough time here to kill her, or drive her mad, when we could have been getting down the list and asking people before everyone finds out about Scrimgeour—"

"Silence! Crucio!" This blast was especially intense, and it had the air of finality. "It won't be today, but I will kill you. And I will find your unnatural daughter and her deformed husband, and I will kill them, too." She tossed Andromeda's wand across the room. "NEXT LOCATION! YOU KNOW WHERE!" she bellowed to her comrades, who obeyed with a series of pops.

Andromeda dragged her shaking body to her wand, not caring why Bellatrix had left it but glad that she had. "_Accio_," she thought as hard as she could. Her throat was too raw with screaming for her to want to say the spell aloud.

Two bottled potions flew into her hands, and she crawled toward the room where she thought they had taken Ted.

He met her midway; he hadn't quite gotten back to his feet yet, either.

"Andromeda," he murmured, and her name had never sounded so beautiful, not even the first time he'd said it.

"Was it anything but the Cruciatus?" she asked, holding the bottle of pain reliever to his lips.

He shook his head as he swallowed. Her hand was shaking and some of the potion dripped down the front of his robes.

"Have you taken this?" Ted asked as he covered her hand with his and held the bottle upright.

"Not yet." She let him feed it to her like a child, more so she could relish the intimacy of the gesture than from necessity.

"What did they do? I heard you screaming. I barely knew what they were doing to me, with you crying like that."

"Then I'm glad I did it." She pulled herself properly upright; the potion worked quickly, although the residual achiness of the curse would linger for days. "If you don't scream and plead, they just think you're hiding something and keep at it longer." She met his wide, worried eyes. "They didn't hurt me much, honestly. Nothing we can't fix." She sealed her promise with a kiss and leaned into Ted. Her skin still felt sore when it was touched, but that was a small price to pay for the incomparable sensation of her body against his. Sighing, she pointed her wand at the ceiling as Ted draped his arm around her. "I'll try to repair the wards."

X

Andromeda didn't like the idea of traveling by Floo Powder with a small baby, but she had never before Apparated to the Burrow. Apparating to a new location came with its own risks, particularly so soon after a war. It was hard to be certain where the ubiquitous anti-Apparition fields might be.

"Do _not_ make a sound," she warned Teddy as she shifted him in her arms. "If you say the wrong thing when you step into a fire, you could end up halfway across the country in a stranger's bedroom."

Carefully, she buried Teddy's face in the folds of her robes and called "the Burrow!" into the flames and ashes.

She emerged into a kitchen that was far too cluttered for her liking but that had the unmistakable air of belonging in a loving home. Unsurprisingly, she found a wand pointed at her heart.

The wand belonged to Molly Weasley and had lately killed Bellatrix Lestrange. Far from wanting revenge, Andromeda found herself wondering if there was a tactful way to thank the woman once they'd tracked Harry down. "Identify yourself."

"My name is Andromeda Tonks. I was called here by an otter-shaped Patronus which identified itself as having been cast by Hermione Granger. We've only met in passing, but my daughter Nymphadora was very fond of you. Her hair was a few shades lighter than mine when she couldn't morph. When she could, it was pink four days out of seven."

Molly lowered her wand. "Thank you for coming, Andromeda. And thank you," she told Teddy. Her eyes swept over the baby almost hungrily. "He's beautiful," she added.

Footsteps pounding down a rickety staircase drowned out Andromeda's reply. "Thank you for coming!" said the same breathless voice that had belonged to the otter ten minutes earlier. "I'm Hermione Granger—we've only met at funerals before." Hermione Granger, of course, had not needed to identify herself. For the rest of her life, she would be the incredibly famous Harry Potter's incredibly famous friend. "Have you had any contact with Harry at all the last two days?"

"None." Faces fell at Andromeda's simple answer. "May I ask what's going on?"

Hermione nodded, and sent a cool look at the red-haired girl who was slumped into a chair in the corner. "Harry and Ginny have been going out, and they had a row after their Quidditch match yesterday. Harry came here, packed a bag, and said he'd see us on Monday, which would be fine if we knew he was somewhere safe where he wasn't doing something dangerous and stupid. We've checked with his friends, and he hasn't gone to see them. He doesn't have any family."

"He could have taken a room somewhere, if he wanted time alone after a fight with his girlfriend."

Hermione nodded. "Ron and George are checking around Diagon Alley. We don't think Harry can have gone into the Muggle world since he's not welcome at Gringotts so he can't change his money for Muggle pounds. We _did_ spend most of the last year camping out, so he might be doing that, but he didn't take the tent." She glared at nothing in particular. "If he wants to be alone, that's his business, but he's got to tell us where and how he's protected. Taking off like that isn't fair, not after what's happened."

As Hermione paced about anxiously, Molly quietly told Andromeda what details she knew of the argument between her daughter and Harry, and Harry's history of wandering off and finding himself in life-threatening situations.

Hermione was the one who noticed Ron and George's return first. Andromeda made note of the spot onto which they had Apparated for future reference.

"Well?" Hermione demanded before the young men were able to make it inside the house. "Did you find anything out?"

"Loads," said Ron grimly. "Everyone on Diagon Alley goes out of their way for George, his store is so popular it helps everyone's business. Sick-making how much they all respect, him really."

"No, sick-making would be how everyone recognizes Ronniekins as the one who went out to save the world with Harry. They all fall on their knees as soon as they see him and ask what they can give him."

"And what did they tell you?" snapped Hermione, who seemed to have little patience for the brothers' thinly disguised mutual admiration society.

Ron and George looked at each other in a way that made it plain to all present that the news was not good. At last, Ron held up a bag. "He went to the Leaky Cauldron last night. No one saw him after he checked in. We found the door to his room unlocked. Nothing missing—not even his wand."

"He wouldn't be the first teenager who ever forgot his wand and forgot to lock a room," suggested Andromeda, but she knew that was wishful thinking even before she'd said it.

"He wouldn't," Ron said, idly twirling both Harry's wand and his own in his hand. "Ever since the first time he saw a dementor and he badgered Remus into teaching him the Patronus Charm, he hasn't. He wouldn't leave his Invisibility Cloak lying out with the door unlocked, either."

"It gets worse, anyway," George interrupted. "No one saw Harry, but what the bartender did see is goblins. One of them was huge— about normal height for a witch."

"So the same one that came to see us at Grimmauld Place that day," said Hermione.

"That's what we thought, too," Ron confirmed. "But the goblins said they officially forgave us."

Hermione sighed. "Honestly, Ron, if you wouldn't listen in History of Magic, you could have at least listened to Bill. Goblins don't have a hive mind. Some are much fiercer than others, and if this one decided he didn't want to toe the line, he wouldn't be the first. The Council will take care of him when they find out what's happened, but if he decided it was worth the risk, he might have gone ahead with his plan anyway."

While Molly tried to contact the Minister of Magic, Hermione continued her (fairly impressive) recitation of the historical dynamics of the goblin community.

George and Ron exchanged an exasperated glance at Hermione's lecture. Ginny, though, remained slumped in her chair and gave no sign that she felt any of the goings-on worthy of her attention.

Andromeda found herself studying the girl with a mixture of aggravation and compassion. She had a certain pseudo-maternal urge to throttle anyone who hurt Harry's feelings, regardless of who had been in the right, but she also knew all too well what it felt like to worry when the man you loved left your home under unpleasant circumstances.

X

Ted and Andromeda followed the news as well as they could in the aftermath of the fall of the Ministry. They had better sources of information than most thanks to Remus and Nymphadora. But there was no need for close connections to the Order of the Phoenix when it came to news about compulsory registration for Muggle-born wizards. Rolls of parchment were delivered to their home daily; fliers covered the streets; and the radio waves were full of directions.

They talked about it periodically, but they didn't say much. The conclusions were obvious and neither wanted to dwell on them. Ted had no intention of registering himself, and he managed to avoid or reschedule his first three "appointments" at the Ministry where he was to have "an opportunity to establish that his magic was not stolen."

One evening, Ted took Andromeda by the hand quite unexpectedly and led her outside. They had just finished their evening meal; Andromeda had rather outdone herself, if she did think so herself. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she had half-believed that if she cooked well enough, Ted wouldn't be able to bring himself to leave. It was a silly, ridiculous craving for control in a world where she was suddenly powerless.

Ted pulled Andromeda directly to the corner of land not protected by anti-Apparition spells or protective wards. From there he Apparated them both to the banks of a pond; not a small muddy pond like the one by their house, but one that bore more resemblance to the lake at Hogwarts.

"It's beautiful," Andromeda said unnecessarily as the light of the nearly full moon glinted off the dark water.

"_You're_ beautiful." It was the kind of statement she would have declared unbearably, nauseatingly sappy if it hadn't been directed at her by the man she had loved for most of her life.

Ted tugged at her robe with an obvious intent. Andromeda laughed and tightened the robe around herself. "Is that any way for a grandfather to behave?" she teased.

"Have to set a good example, especially if it's a boy," Ted murmured, and brushed his lips against her neck.

Her heart pounding like it had the first time Ted had kissed her, Andromeda allowed Ted to divest them both of their clothing and lead her into the pond.

"I want to remember this," he told her when they were wrapped around each other deep in the water. "You looking like this, feeling like this. Us, somewhere other than hiding, one last time." Their eyes locked. "You should know," he continued, "that I'm leaving tomorrow. They aren't going to let me put off registering any longer."

"I'll go with you," she said quickly, because she had to make the offer even though she knew he would refuse.

He shook his head. It looked as if even that small gesture was causing him pain. "Dora's pregnant. She needs help."

"She has—"

"A chronically ill husband who already tried to leave her once, and who is quite high on the Death Eaters' hit list, and who has certainly never given birth to a child. Do you think Dora can just go to Saint Mungo's when she goes into labor? Or do you think You-Know-Who already knows she's pregnant and will have someone waiting there for her?"

"I know," Andromeda admitted.

"God, I want you with me. But I want you to be with our daughter more. I want you to be safe more. Everyone knows you're a pureblood."

"I wish I weren't," she hissed, and leaned into another kiss even though the romantic scene had necessarily lost its magic.

X

Andromeda dragged herself from her reverie to find that nothing had changed in Molly Weasley's kitchen. Hermione was pacing; Ginny was motionless; and Molly and the boys were fidgeting with one thing and another.

"Ron? Ron Weasley?"

The seven of them reacted with comical coordination at the sound of Harry's voice. Those in motion stiffened; those who were still straightened up. Even Teddy gave an uncoordinated jerk at the sound of his godfather's voice.

"Ron, this feels stupid," Harry continued. "But if you can hear me through the deluminator, the goblins threw me in the Lestranges' vault. I don't think they intend to let me out. Ever."

Ron was fumbling with the odd-looking device from which Harry's voice was emanating. "Come on," he said to Hermione abruptly. "Let's go."

"Go where?"

"We're breaking into Gringotts again," Ron said, as if speaking to a very small child.

"No, we're letting the Ministry and the Goblins' Council have a go at it first," said Hermione in much the same way. "These are rebel goblins, not the population as a whole. Haven't you listened to anything I've said today?"

X

"Haven't you listened to anything I've said today?" Andromeda asked her daughter.

Nymphadora, irritable and nine months pregnant, managed what was at least a rather pleasant groan. "I've listened. I just don't care. I can't stand not knowing. If Remus isn't back in ten minutes, I'm going after him."

"That's the last thing he'd want. We heard him on Potterwatch two hours ago. There was no sign of any trouble."

"I know, I know. Wish he hadn't. It's not like we don't know where Harry is right now, anyway. Don't need to watch for him." Nymphadora heaved herself to her feet. "I know Remus had to do it, but I wish he hadn't. We've just lost Dad, I can't lose him, too."

"And Remus and I can't lose you and that baby because you went out on an unnecessary rescue mission of which you are not capable in your current condition!" Andromeda snapped. Her eyes flickered over her daughter's abdomen for the umpteenth time that day. "That baby has turned, Nymphadora, and right on time. You'll have it tomorrow if you don't have it today."

Nymphadora shrugged, as if going into labor was the least of her concerns—which, under the circumstances, it probably was.

The unborn baby, perhaps taking umbrage to its mother's apathy, chose that moment to make Andromeda's point. Nymphadora grimaced involuntarily.

"Contraction?" asked Andromeda innocently. It was probably unkind to mock her daughter as she went into labor without her husband and in the middle of a war that might make advanced medical treatment difficult to obtain should it become necessary. But Andromeda's relief that today, at least, Nymphadora would not be dancing through passels of Death Eaters bent on murder rather overwhelmed her.

"Why are you taking her side?" Nymphadora demanded of the child.

Nymphadora fought every inch of the way as Andromeda escorted her upstairs and forced her into bed. ("Let it _alone_, Mum, this takes hours and I'm telling you right now that _nothing_ will happen until Remus gets here, are you listening, baby?")

The telltale sounds of Remus' returned echoed through the house soon afterwards. "Stay there," Andromeda commanded Nymphadora, who rolled her eyes.

She hastily tested Remus' identity before ordering him to his wife's side. The look that passed between her daughter and son-in-law as they joined hands constricted her heart. She and Ted had been right to let the marriage proceed without voicing any of their doubts to their daughter.

But the rush of vicarious joy was fleeting. She put it aside, along with her grief for Ted. This was not the time to focus on her delight that her daughter had married a man whom she adored and who adored her. Nor was it the time to bask in the irony of helping to bring a new life into the world so soon after losing the man who had been the dominant force in her own life. No, all she could do was convince herself and everyone else that in circumstances like these, she was as good as a trained Healer.

The birth was blissfully quick and free from complications. Before Andromeda knew it, she was wrapping her grandson in a blanket and placing him in Nymphadora's arms. The slight weight of the baby, and the thrill of being the first person he saw as she helped him from his mother's body, left Andromeda fairly floating with delight for the first time since she had learned of Ted's death.

"Does he have a name?" she asked her daughter and son-in-law, both of whom had suggested many a ridiculous name over the past several months.

Again, Remus' eyes met Nymphadora's and they had no need for words.

"Mum," said Nymphadora quietly, "we'd like you to meet Teddy."

X

Hermione and Ron rapidly formulated a highly unlikely plan to break into Gringotts should more diplomatic procedures fail. Andromeda had to admire their nerve and focus even in the midst of her own worry over Harry.

The plan was still rather unrefined, for all its hints of brilliance and experience, when a man who could only have been Bill Weasley stepped out of the fire. He looked as his younger brothers had upon their return from Diagon Alley earlier that day: as if the news he bore was not good.

"The Gringotts goblins can't get into the vault," Bill told them bluntly. "I went down there with them myself. They've got a confession from the goblins who did it—rebels, this wasn't sanctioned. They don't know how to open it, either."

"Or so they say," said George darkly.

"Goblins have got ways of making each other talk," said Bill just as darkly. "Some of the other curse breakers are down there now. I'll be getting back to them. But we all agree that this is wand-magic. The Lestranges and their friends did this, not the goblins who took Harry."

"Are you sure?" demanded Hermione.

Bill smiled without mirth. "I've been breaking curses for a lot of years, Hermione. I know the difference between a wizard's magic and a goblin's. This is a nasty coincidence, nothing more."

Bill looked around the room and seemed to notice Andromeda for the first time. Molly watched her eldest son's gaze. "Bill, sweetheart, this is Andromeda Tonks," said Molly hastily. "Andromeda, my eldest son Bill."

"I know this is tactless, Mrs. Tonks," began Bill, who clearly had already known exactly who Andromeda was, "but do you have any idea of what kind of spells the Lestranges might have chosen to put on their vault?"

Andromeda had never gotten into the habit of swearing, but if she had, this would have been the time for it. She stood up and plucked Teddy from the crib which had materialized in the kitchen sometime during the long wait.

"Would Gringotts be willing to let me try to get in myself?" she asked Bill, not caring what his answer might be.

Bill shrugged. "The goblins won't like it, but under the circumstances, with everyone knowing that Bellatrix Lestrange was your sister…"

"I'll be there in ten minutes." She looked at the other assembled Weasleys and Hermione, all of whom were gaping at her in open-mouthed astonishment. "Perhaps you should go to George's shop and wait there. Harry and I will join you in half an hour or so."

They all began asking questions at once, but Andromeda addressed herself only to Molly. "I'm not about to let Bellatrix take the life of another child I love," she said firmly, and she knew Molly understood.

X

"Mum, I love you. Thank you for everything, and thank you for taking care of Teddy." Nymphadora threw her arms around Andromeda. One tear slipped down her heart-shaped face, but her jaw was set with determination.

"Good luck. Be careful," Andromeda managed. She shifted Teddy in her arms. "We'll be waiting for you."

"I'll be back as soon as I can." Nymphadora kissed her mother and then her son. "I'll miss you."

With that, Nymphadora sprinted from the house. She never looked back.

Andromeda never saw her daughter alive again.

X

Andromeda Apparated to the gates of Malfoy Manor as easily as if it had not been a quarter-century since she had last done so.

"You know who I am?" she asked the quivering house-elf who greeted her.

"Yes," it squeaked.

"Then tell Mrs. Malfoy that it would behoove her to see me."

_To be continued_

**Next Chapter: **_Sisterly bonding? Sororicide? Who knows! _

_Thank you for the reviews!_


	15. Present Reunion

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

_**Extra Disclaimer: **__Lots of quotes from various Potter books in this chapter. You'll know them when you see them if you're inclined to read fan fiction in the first place. _

* * *

Harry sat in the middle of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange's vault with his arms clasped tightly around his legs more to keep himself from fidgeting than because he sought a false sense of security. He knew, from recent experience, that if he touched anything his situation would become much, much worse.

There were few things Harry Potter disliked more than knowing without seeking. That made his current predicament rather distasteful. He knew that he needed to free himself from the vault, but if he sought his own path out, he would most likely die in an excruciatingly painful manner. Burning to a crisp or being suffocated by multiplying objects protecting themselves from theft was not an appealing prospect.

The goblins had divested him of his Fawkes-feather wand when they'd attacked him at the Leaky Cauldron; the Elder Wand, though, was still inside his robes. He hadn't yet found a way to dispose of it properly. Now he wished he had left it somewhere and spared himself the temptation of blasting his way out of the vault.

He knew that the smart, practical thing to do was wait for someone to come for him, at least for a while. He had already called out to Ron in the hopes that the Deluminator would get his message through. Even if that had not worked—and really, it wasn't fair to expect Ron to continue to carry the Deluminator about—surely someone had seen the goblins at the Leaky Cauldron and reached the correct conclusion.

Being locked up, in and of itself, wasn't especially hard for Harry. His aunt and uncle had locked him in smaller spaces than this for most of his childhood. But not being able to do anything was horrible, and a fairly new sensation.

Ever since Harry had learned that he was a wizard, he had been expected to act rather than wait. He had protected the Philosopher's Stone; he had saved Ginny from the Chamber of Secrets and destroyed a Horcrux without knowing what a Horcrux was; he had helped Sirius and Buckbeak escape from the Ministry that wanted to execute them; he had won the Triwizard Tournament…

And that had been the turning point, hadn't it?

He had watched Mrs. Weasley relentlessly busy herself with meaningless tasks in the aftermath of Fred's death. Now, when he was forced by circumstance to remain still and do nothing, he knew that, to some extent, he'd been doing the same thing himself for years. There was no time to mourn the dead when there was another Death Eater, another battle, another quest, another Horcrux.

Now, suddenly, the surviving Death Eaters were in prison. The last battle had been won. No one expected that Harry should do anything other than exactly what he liked, and the Horcruxes were gone. The path that he had been set upon since before his birth had ended.

He hadn't done badly. He knew that. Things had gotten messy, particularly after the Triwizard Tournament…

Involuntarily, he wrapped his arms more tightly around himself as he remembered hearing the cold voice in person for the first time since babyhood:

"_Kill the spare."_

Then, more recently:

"_I regret it." "Take…it…take…it…Look…at…me…"_

The words tumbled over each other, fast and thick:

"_Come on! You can do better than that!"_

"_We've got a problem, Snape. The boy doesn't seem able—" "Severus… Severus… please…" "Avada Kedavra!"_

"_You're joking, Perce! You actually __**are**__ joking, Perce… I don't think I've heard you joke since you were—" "No—no—no! No! Fred! No!"_

"_Mad-Eye's dead. We saw it... Voldemort's curse hit Mad-Eye full in the face, he fell backward off his broom and—there was nothing we could do, nothing, we had half a dozen of them on our own tail."_

His own voice merged into the others.

"_No—NO! Hedwig—__**Hedwig**__— You're going to kill me? After I saved your life? You owe me, Wormtail! Dobby, no, don't die, don't die—" _

There were bodies everywhere in his mind's eye. Corpses of children were thrown over the shoulders of the survivors. Corpses were piled as if asleep, row upon row, in the Great Hall.

Harry lowered his head to his knees and tried to will away the voices he had listened to on _Potterwatch_ moments before his kidnapping, not to mention the voices that he would never hear again except in his own head.

It didn't work. The laughing voices and the pleading voices, the resigned voices and the defiant voices all intended to keep him company and second-guess his decisions as he sat on the floor of a Death Eater's vault and waited to be rescued or die.

When-if he got out of here, he was going to have to forsake Hermione's plan to kind of-sort of return to classes. Kingsley was willing to let him join the Aurors as he was, and being an Auror was the only thing he could imagine allowing him to keep the memories at bay until they quieted of their own accord. He had long intended to become an Auror and he wasn't going to wait. He knew what happened to people who waited, even if they were only waiting to steal one more moment with their two best friends.

He and Ron and Hermione couldn't be an inseparable unit every day of the year any longer. That was perhaps the one bad thing that came with the ending of the war.

That, and the fact that the war hadn't ended until so many had died.

_No! NO! Avada Kedavra! No!_

X

To Narcissa's credit, she didn't make Andromeda wait, nor did she bother with posturing. She didn't bother to speak at all, come to that; she merely placed herself in front of her sister in the great echoing cavern of a front hall and raised her fair, arched eyebrows. The anxious lines on her face, barely visible through carefully applied layers of makeup and charms, had multiplied since Andromeda had last caught a glimpse of her.

Teddy, apparently influenced by a long morning spent with the Weasleys, had sported ginger hair for several hours. As he observed Narcissa for the first time, though, he adjusted to a shocking white-blond. Under the circumstances, Andromeda refrained from telling him that Narcissa was the last person he wanted to emulate. She settled for taking small pleasure in the tiny start Narcissa gave at the sight of her metamorphmagus grandnephew. Any crack in Narcissa's icy demeanor had to be taken as a victory.

"I would like you to come with me to Gringotts and help me open the Lestranges' vault," Andromeda told Narcissa without embellishment.

"I have no interest in helping the Ministry confiscate my only sister's possessions," said Narcissa coolly. "If that is all—" She turned to leave, but not too quickly. She knew that that wasn't all.

"You do have an interest in keeping your husband and son out of prison, and an interest in repairing your rather unfortunate public image. I imagine that was why you appeared at my daughter's memorial service?" Narcissa's cool eyes betrayed nothing; Andromeda held more than enough cards, but still felt that she was the one struggling for control. There was something dizzying about speaking for the first time to a woman who had once been a girl she had known as well as anyone else in the world. "You knew you'd lost the war, Cissa. You knew that your son faced the possibility of life as an outcast since he's known to have been Death Eater. Just pretending he was under the Imperius Curse wasn't going to work for Lucius twice. So you made a tactical decision to remind the world that you have connections to the ones who are making the rules now."

"I fail to see what the contents of my sister's Gringotts vault has to do with anything Draco may or may not have done."

"Then allow me to enlighten you. Your family's fortune is currently inextricably bound to Harry Potter's statement that you lied to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and saved Harry's life in the process. I suppose I should thank you, but I realize that you were only acting to further your own interests. If Harry should die locked in the Lestranges' vault, however, any goodwill toward you will die with him."

"If that boy has managed to get himself locked in a vault, it's hardly my doing or concern."

"And yet, you happen to be the only one who can help me remove him from the vault, so I am making it your concern. If you do not accompany me to Gringotts, I will make sure that it is known to everyone who will listen that you had it in your power to protect him and you declined. I will also tell everyone who will listen about your son placing the Cruciatus Curse on me not ten minutes after the Ministry fell last autumn."

"Draco did no such thing," said Narcissa, a little too sharply. "Everyone knows that Death Eaters wear masks; you can't have known who was who."

"I knew every one of their voices and their figures. I didn't need to see faces to recognize people I have unfortunately known all my life. For Merlin's sake, Bellatrix was the leader. She murdered Sirius and she murdered my daughter. Who will fail to believe me when I testify that she ordered her nephew to place an Unforgivable Curse on me, and he complied? Who will fail to believe me when I tell them what happened here today, when—"

"Why do you require my services to open the vault?" Narcissa interrupted, seeming to concede Andromeda's point. "Gringotts employs curse breakers. A simple wife and mother—"

"A simple wife and mother who was there the day the sp—" Andromeda choked. She had meant to say _the day the spells were put in place by Rhydian Lestrange_, but something stronger than she was forcibly stopped her.

Narcissa, collected once more, raised her eyebrows again.

Teddy, who had been solemnly taking in his new surroundings, began to cry at what he perceived as Andromeda's distress.

Andromeda made shushing noises at Teddy while she recovered from the unexpected spasms in her throat and tightness in her mouth.

_The Fidelius Charm_, she realized at last. She didn't know whether Bellatrix or Rhydian or Rodolphus had been the Secret-Keeper, but all three had died without telling her exactly what she had done the day before Bellatrix's wedding.

"The Fidelius Charm," she told Narcissa, who had been patently unmoved by Andromeda's struggle.

"What about the Fidelius Charm?" asked Narcissa, who seemed to be genuinely confused rather than tauntingly, willfully, ignorant. Then again, with Narcissa it was difficult to tell. At least, it had been difficult with the child Narcissa. Andromeda didn't know the adult Narcissa.

A quick burst of frustration rose in Andromeda, followed by a cool, comforting wave of confidence. She remembered how Nymphadora had inadvertently told her exactly where to find the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. She remembered how Sirius could have made her guess with just a glance. Her only blood relatives worth a damn (save Teddy) had been murdered by Bellatrix, but not before they'd showed her how to save Harry.

"The day before Bellatrix's wedding, we went—"the charm cut her off. "Old Rhydian Lestrange gave her a wedding present."

"The vault," said Narcissa, as if speaking to a very small, very slow child.

"There was a spell to transfer ownership," Andromeda said, focusing on Teddy's still-blond head and hoping that the Fidelius Charm thought she was suddenly speaking of something else, and decided it needn't interfere.

"Of course!" A minuscule hint of delight slipped through Narcissa's mask as she solved the puzzle. "You and I did the blood spells with Bellatrix to protect the contents! She didn't want you, but Rhydian insisted, so the Fidelius Charm was cast to keep you from speaking."

"And that's the only way to open the vault now," Andromeda completed, suddenly free from the Charm now that she had been told the secret in what passed for good faith. "The goblins can't do it. The curse breakers can't do it. Only you and I can do it, and as your family's future depends upon Harry, I thought you might appreciate an invitation."

Narcissa's face became, if possible, even colder and harder than before. But she didn't object.

"You can leave the baby here," she said grudgingly. "The house-elves will see to it, and Draco is home to supervise them."

"Where I go, Teddy goes," said Andromeda firmly. She couldn't fathom the circumstances under which she would allow her grandchild to remain at Malfoy Manor alone. In fact, she couldn't fathom the circumstances under which she would allow anyone else to see to Teddy without her supervision. If anyone was ever going to take Teddy far from her sight, it would be…_Harry_, she realized with some surprise. She would have to tell him when he was freed. He would appreciate the thought, and understand how hard a thought it was for Andromeda to think.

"As you wish." Narcissa made a light, stylish traveling cloak fly into her hand. "I assume you prefer to Apparate?"

"I do."

With eerie precision, they moved to the spot beyond the gates that allowed for Disapparition, and reappeared beside Gringotts.

X

Bill Weasley was waiting for them near the entrance. If he was unnerved or startled by Narcissa's presence, he didn't show it; but then, perhaps the only upside of having one's countenance permanently scarred by a werewolf was an impeccable poker face. Bill, who had once been reputed to be quite handsome, no longer _had_ a face in the strictest sense.

"Right this way, Mrs. Tonks, Mrs. Malfoy," Bill directed smoothly. "I've cleared this with the goblins, but I have to warn you, they aren't happy. It would help if you gave me some kind of clue what you intend to do."

"There was a blood spell placed on the vault when Rhydian Lestrange gave it to Bellatrix and Rodolphus," said Andromeda, pleased to explain now that she could. "Because we were Bellatrix's sisters, we were used in case of an emergency—in case she was somehow unable to open the vault after invoking her emergency precautions."

"Just how Dark is this magic?" asked Bill as they all climbed into one of the carts that would transport them to the deepest, most secure vaults.

That, Andromeda didn't even know.

"It's not so much Dark as ancient," Narcissa put in helpfully, although something in her tone still managed to suggest that she was appalled to be having this conversation with two lowly blood traitors. "But then, some wizards have always been pleased to blur the line."

Despite the dire situation, Andromeda had to suppress a snicker when Narcissa banged her leg painfully climbing out of the cart. Bill made a point of helping Andromeda and Teddy while Narcissa was left to fend for herself.

Narcissa managed to recover with grace marred only by the trace of disgust that permeated her every gesture.

The area in front of the vault was crowded with wizards and goblins who milled about anxiously, scratched their heads, and had loud, frustrated conversations. A few wizards were aiming their wands at the door, but whatever spells they cast came quite obviously to nothing.

As the swarm noticed Andromeda and Narcissa, it parted to make a path for the former sisters. Narcissa withdrew a silver dagger from her robe, prompting several wizards to jump protectively toward Andromeda and Teddy.

Narcissa rolled her eyes in disgust. "It's a blood spell. I hope you don't expect us to break it without blood." Her heavy sarcasm prompted no one to step back, but a nod from Andromeda did.

With minimal ceremony, Narcissa cut her own palm and passed the dagger to Andromeda, who allowed Bill to take Teddy from her arms before she followed suit.

It was Narcissa who knew the chant and began it. Andromeda's words were a few seconds behind as she mimicked the other woman. Their singsong came to an abrupt stop as the vault shuddered and made a clanging noise. Behind them, the wizards raised their wands and the goblins raised their hands.

The door slid open to reveal nothing out of place but Harry Potter, crumpled still and unmoving on the floor.

* * *

_To be continued._

_Thank you for the reviews._


	16. Present Eyes

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

There was a horrible long moment where Andromeda believed that Harry might be dead. Ted was dead; Nymphadora was dead; Remus was dead. Why shouldn't Harry die, too?

But before anyone could reach for Harry—Bill Weasley had stormed forward with his wand raised and Teddy cradled in one arm—he responded to the sound, light, and comparatively fresh air of his own accord. Andromeda wasn't sure she had ever seen anything as wonderful as the skinny body uncurling itself and gangling to its feet.

"Harry," she managed to call, but only just. Her voice wavered like it hadn't the whole time she had threatened Narcissa.

Hers wasn't the only voice that had called out. The wizards and witches were asking if he was all right; even the goblins, uncommonly solicitous, were looking for assurances that Harry wouldn't allow this misunderstanding to provoke a fresh wave of anti-goblin sentiment among wizards, would he?

Still, it was Andromeda Harry turned toward right away. She saw that his eyes were too bright and his cheeks too flushed. He had never struck her as the sort to respond to a kidnapping with a bout of weeping, not he with all his Gryffindor bravado, but that hardly mattered. She was only pleased that she would have more time to learn what he would and wouldn't do when he came around to see Teddy.

She retrieved Teddy from Bill with one hand and reached for Harry with the other. Narcissa's bloody dagger she left on the floor; Narcissa could retrieve it if she wanted it. Andromeda doubted that Narcissa had any desire to keep a weapon that had been stained by the willingly-given blood of a blood traitor. Andromeda didn't care.

"You don't intend to pester Harry with questions before he's been made comfortable, do you? I'm sure you understand that you'll get a much more satisfactory response if he's allowed to catch his breath first," Andromeda told Harry's anxious well-wishers as she wrapped her free arm around Harry in a half-hug. Harry neither responded nor resisted, so Andromeda guided him toward the first cart.

Behind them, a handful of Ministry officials were questioning Narcissa about the contents of the vault, and a handful of goblins were protesting that the contents of a vault were the business of no wizard but the owner. Andromeda was glad for the distraction. It was the first time in almost as long as she could remember that Bellatrix had been useful.

Teddy wriggled in her arms as the cart began its long climb back to street level. Andromeda clutched him more tightly, but this only made Teddy more determined to reach out— not toward the side of the cart, but toward Harry.

A slight suggestion of a smile passed over Harry's face as he closed his hand over his godson's grasping fingers. "Be careful, Teddy," he whispered. His voice was painfully dry; Andromeda could barely make out his words. "You don't want to go over the edge. Trust me."

"Listen to your godfather. That's very good advice," said Andromeda firmly. She tried to catch Harry's eye, but he was having none of it. "Harry?" She prompted. "Can you hold your godson?"

"Yeah, of course." The cart gave a jolt as Teddy exchanged his grandmother's lap for his godfather's, so it was just as well that four hands were tight on his squirming body. Then, when Andromeda was certain that Teddy was secure in Harry's arms, she conjured a cup and filled it with water.

"Drink," she ordered Harry, returning one hand to the baby so Harry could loosen his grip.

The cart bumped along, and at least as much water splashed on Harry's face as made its way into his mouth. That was just as well; Andromeda conjured a cloth and wiped the water off of his face, taking the streak marks left by tears along with it.

X

The cart made its way of the steep incline without losing speed, and Harry knew that soon they would be back above ground in the vast marble hall with its long counters and brass scales. He had to decide on a plan and be ready to put it in action by the time they reached the surface. A familiar feeling of confidence surged through Harry. Andromeda looked upset—over_ him_?—and when someone else was worrying and mourning, Harry could plan.

Andromeda had been trying to catch his eye since she'd opened the door, and he'd been steadfastly avoiding her. Feelings of shame were still present and accounted for, but he had to conquer them, and he had to conquer them right away. He'd been able to accept being the Chosen One and all that entailed years ago; certainly he ought to be able to pull himself together enough to finish the job.

Andromeda's undeniably motherly touch against his face was what finally pushed him to meet her concerned gaze and begin to put the pieces together.

He let Teddy fasten his small hands around the cup from which he had been drinking and let his own hand grip the Elder Wand. Silently, he cast _muffliato_ so the goblin driving the cart would not hear his conversation with Andromeda.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, even though he thought he already knew. His latest plan depended upon his suspicions being correct. His voice sounded a little bit better to his own ears; the drink of water had helped. He'd been afraid to cast _auguamenti_ while he was in the vault; he hadn't known what effect it might have on the Dark objects surrounding him.

"There were some problems opening the vault, and I was called upon to assist."

"And Mrs. Malfoy?" Harry prompted.

"Also provided required assistance, for which I'm sure she expects to be properly repaid in socio-political capital."

"Why couldn't the goblins open the vault themselves?"

Andromeda gave him a brief overview involving the use of blood to cast a spell which could make a lock virtually impossible to break. Harry nodded. It was as he'd thought; something akin to the spells that had bound him to the Dursleys because Aunt Petunia had been his mother's sister.

"How closely related do the people casting the spells have to be?"

"I'm not an expert on this, Harry. I cast that spell when I was sixteen years old and no one ever told me precisely what I was doing. But I should think that it would be less effective if you were using cousins separated by more than two or three degrees."

That was a problem. The only people in the world who were that closely related to Harry were Dudley and Aunt Petunia. "Do you absolutely need more than one person to cast it?"

"Not at all. Bellatrix cast it on her own. Narcissa and I were to be used in case of an emergency. That was why Rhydian Lestrange—it was his vault before he gave it to his nephew when he married Bellatrix—used both of us. He was concerned that Narcissa might betray Bellatrix if the power rested with her alone."

"Can you teach me that spell?" he asked anxiously.

"I don't suppose I want to know what you want to hide."

Harry shook his head. "Can you teach me the spell?" he repeated.

"I cast it once, many years ago. I don't know that I remember."

"Would you use a Pensieve to clarify it? Please? I know we don't know each other very well, and I know it's a very personal thing to ask, especially just after you've saved my life—thank you—but it's very important." He'd spent much of the last year asking venerable witches and wizards to do things for him without explanation. It got easier each time he did it, but it never came without a twinge of nerve-wracking guilt. And Harry had had enough guilt that day. The sick feeling in his stomach returned, along with the memories of the dead and dying. But he had to do this so no one else would die, and he might never get such a good opportunity to hide what had historically been un-hideable.

It was hard work not to look away from Andromeda's steady gaze.

He saw Andromeda agree before she said anything. Her eyes sparkled like Tonks' had when she was playful, and glinted like Sirius' had when he'd been deep in thought. (In that moment, Harry resolved to have more patience with everyone who told him that he had his mother's eyes instead of finding the observation tiresome.)

She moved her wand slightly, and Harry assumed that she had just cast an anti-eavesdropping spell. Harry didn't tell her that that had been taken care of; it was best that she didn't know about the Elder Wand. "Gringotts has meeting rooms where goblins can have private discussions with vault owners. Ask to be left alone in one with me as soon as we reach the top. Ask for the Pensieve as well—they have some to resolve disputes that arise over oral agreements. The goblins will want your assurances that you will not use your kidnapping to stir up anti-goblin sentiment. Don't give it to them until after we've spoken."

"I didn't intend to." The last thing Harry wanted was a full-blown goblin rebellion or more interspecies conflict, but he'd learned a thing or two about dealing with goblins recently. He was not about to give up his leverage before he put it to good use.

But then, the goblins wouldn't be anxious to let him into the vault area alone, and he didn't want to resort to Unforgivable Curses to control them. "Will they also sell a lockbox that can go inside the vault? It might be easier to put the spell on the box instead of on the vault itself."

"I think that would be considerably easier, yes," Andromeda agreed. "It won't come cheap, but it shouldn't be a problem."

Silently, Harry ended the anti-eavesdropping spell he had cast as their cart reached the top of the track. He saw Andromeda do the same. She stepped from the cart first, and Harry passed Teddy into her arms before he climbed out himself.

A motley collection of wizards and goblins rushed to their side. Harry raised his hand for silence and was instantly obeyed, as he always was nowadays.

He ignored the multitude of pleas and questions and asked to be taken to a private room and provided with a Pensieve and a lockbox, the latter of which he was willing to purchase. This was provided at once.

Inside the small, marble room, he cast_muffliato_ once again, and without ceremony Andromeda deposited a silvery stand of memory into the Pensieve. Before the situation became more awkward than it already was, Harry plunged headfirst into the memory.

All at once, he was beside the vault where he had so recently been imprisoned. He resolutely ignored a jolt of queasiness. "I'm not really here," he reminded himself aloud, because it was not as if the others would be able to hear him.

He recognized the teenaged Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa Black; he knew, too, the younger Rodolphus Lestrange. The old man began speaking as soon as Harry had steadied himself enough to hear. This must be the Rhydian Lestrange that Andromeda had mentioned.

"_Miss Bellatrix, the vault will be in your name and that of your husband. But should you ever need to take… unusual measures, it must be you who takes them, for it will recognize you."_

Harry winced at the how eager Bellatrix seemed to be to make herself bleed at Rhydian's command. He forced himself to listen to the words she repeated over and over in a low, sultry voice.

"_Now it will know only a new family, and will not respond to my brother should he become difficult. Perhaps, for absolute safety, we shall use your sisters?"_

"_Cissy will suffice."_

Harry watched as a flash of relief passed across the younger Andromeda's face. She knew that she wanted no part of this world, it was clear.

"_If both are used, both must betray you."_

"_That's not what I'm afraid of," Bellatrix snapped. "All right, both of them."_

Rhydian cut each of the young girls' palms with a single stroke. Harry murmured the chant along with them this time to be certain that he had memorized it properly. He had.

"_But as your sister rightly suggests, little can be left to chance,"_ Rhydian concluded, and he cast the Fidelius Charm. Harry would have to ask Andromeda how she'd managed to work around that.

He withdrew from the Pensieve to find that Andromeda and Teddy had vacated the room. Andromeda's wand lay squarely in the middle of the table, along with a small knife. Harry took the wand and recast _muffliato_ just in case. Andromeda's wand felt faster than his own, but somehow less powerful. He would have preferred to use his Fawkes-feather wand, but as that was not an option, Andromeda's wand was not a complete mismatch.

He removed the Elder Wand from beneath his clothes and dropped it into the lockbox, which he sealed with his newly learned blood spell. He had originally intended to return the Elder Wand to Dumbledore's grave, but that could hardly be achieved in secret and he didn't want to encourage grave-robbing. Until he died and the Elder Wand broke, someone would always be seeking it and its power. The greater good would not be served by reuniting the wand with its previous owner's corpse, and if anyone understood that, it was Albus Dumbledore.

Harry removed the anti-eavesdropping charms with Andromeda's wand and opened the door, announcing as he did that he would now be pleased to discuss any concerns the goblins of Gringotts might have.

Half a dozen goblins, all long fingers and sharp teeth, trooped inside and presented Harry with a rather disgusting and bloody prediction as to what might happen if relations between wizards and goblins were to sour. "So you understand how important it is that you convince the wizards of Britain that this unfortunate incident was _not_ sanctioned by the Goblins' Council, and that no permanent harm was done to you," the main spokesgoblin concluded.

Harry nodded. "I would prefer to do as you ask. But…" he trailed off in a melodramatic sigh in imitation of Professor Slughorn.

"But?" prompted the spokesgoblin dangerously.

"But, the population at large does seem to love me and take my safety seriously, I must admit." He spread his arms wide as if to say that there was nothing he could do about such an inconvenient obstacle as his current immense popularity. The goblins grimaced. Harry didn't blame them. He couldn't believe what was coming out of his own mouth. He was able to keep at it only by reminding himself that if all went well, he might be saving many future lives. "When I say I am treated well, they are disinclined to believe me unless they see it with their own eyes. For instance, it is known that I do not come to Gringotts myself to make withdrawals from my own vault, and that my friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger do not have vaults of their own because of certain… prejudices against us for our past actions."

"Those problems were remedied when we dealt with the renegades who attacked you," said the spokesgoblin hastily. "You are more than welcome to make deposits and withdrawals personally, and if your… friends have treasure and wish to open accounts of their own, they are welcome as well."

"And if I have the gold to pay for it, you wouldn't mind renting me a second vault? Just large enough to store this?" He gestured at the box which concealed the Elder Wand. The goblins looked at it distastefully, probably assuming that Harry had yet again stolen from the Lestranges' vault.

"For how long?"

"Until my death."

The goblins exchanged glances amongst themselves. "I've no objection to bringing in some extra gold," said one at last. He sneered at Harry. "You do understand that we can't let you have it for free."

"I would never expect or want that." The transaction was completed quickly. To Harry's relief, his new vault (no one objected when he registered it in the name of "Vernon Dudley") was not so deep within the caverns as his regular vault, let alone the Lestranges' vault.

This done, he gave a quick statement to the lingering Ministry officials and journalists about the competence and good intentions of the goblins and expressed his complete faith in them.

Andromeda was waiting in the entryway. She could hardly have left, after all; Harry still had her wand, which he handed over promptly. "I should have thought to bring your own," she told him as they stepped into the sunlight of Diagon Alley.

"You know where it is?" asked Harry, surprised. He had hoped to get it back, but hadn't expected that to happen so quickly.

"Your friends Ron and George found it in your room at the Leaky Cauldron with, so far as they could tell, the rest of your belongings. We should head to George's shop now. I promised I'd have you there in half an hour, and it's closer to forty-five minutes already."

"Oh."

Harry couldn't find the words to say more, which was just as well. As usual, no one was able to pass him by without pointing, whispering, or giggling. Andromeda wrapped one arm around Harry's waist and wordlessly warned the gawkers to stay away. Harry leaned half-consciously into the unexpected support.

"Harry?" she asked as they drew near Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes.

He mumbled meaninglessly; luckily, Andromeda accepted it as an appropriate response.

"Are you ready to go back to the Burrow? Are you up to facing Ginny?"

Being attacked and imprisoned by goblins, crying himself sick over the deaths of his friends, disposing of the bloody Elder Wand, and playing on his celebrity status in a way that left him feeling in desperate need of a shower had driven Ginny from his mind. Now that Andromeda mentioned her, though, Harry had to suppress an urge to collapse to the street and lie there until his over-full mind went blank.

"Yes or no will do, Harry," Andromeda prompted.

"No, but… no," Harry admitted, too tired to think things through further.

"Would you like me to tell Molly that you'll be staying with Teddy and me for a few days?"

Even through his numbness, Harry knew that that would be a problem. "Mrs. Weasley… all of the Weasleys sacrificed a lot so I could be with them during the war."

"Well, we'll tell Molly that if she wanted to keep you indefinitely, she should have raised her idiot daughter to treat you better."

Harry glanced at Andromeda in disbelief. He wasn't at all certain that she was joking. "Ginny didn't—" Andromeda took pity on him and smiled. "Not funny."

"Then we'll find a more appropriate excuse for you to visit. I'll tell her I need help with Teddy, and everyone will pretend not to realize that you and Ginny need your space for the moment. All right?"

Harry nodded, and just in time, because the joke shop loomed ahead of them in all its vibrant glory. The door banged open and Hermione flew at him, obviously in tears and talking very quickly. Harry couldn't entirely make out what she was saying, which was just as well, because the word "stupid" was arising far too many times for his liking.

Then Mrs. Weasley ran outside, too, and pushed Hermione aside so she could hug Harry, too. Harry couldn't make out what she was saying, either, but he strongly suspected that there was far less name-calling involved.

George and Ron were, more calmly, ushering everyone inside; Harry hardly noticed as his back was slapped and his hand was shaken because he was looking around for Ginny in spite of himself.

"She stayed home because she didn't know if you'd want to see her. Hermione encouraged it. She's scary, Hermione," Ron whispered in Harry's ear. Harry nodded.

"Thanks for hanging on to the Deluminator," he whispered back.

"Sure," said Ron. They were both embarrassedly fiddling with the small jokes in the nearest bins; a small explosion from what was apparently a defective box of fireworks provided a welcome distraction. Ron presented Harry with his Fawkes-feather wand so he could help put out the ensuing fire.

"That's enough," snapped Mrs. Weasley as the smoke cleared. "Harry is not going to be blown up today."

"Notice she doesn't mind if the rest of us get blown up," George muttered under his breath. Harry knew it was meant in fun, having heard George and Fred make similar remarks dozens of times, but he couldn't find the energy to grin.

"All of you, back to the Burrow, now!" Mrs. Weasley snapped at George, Ron, Hermione, and Harry. "Harry, dear, what would you like to eat? We'll have it just as soon as I can cook it. Oh, Andromeda, would you and Teddy like to join us?"

"I'd like to ask you for a bigger favor than that, if it's possible, Molly." Harry froze. Not going back to the Burrow just yet had seemed like the only possible option when he and Andromeda had been outside, but now it seemed nothing short of dangerous. An unpleasant memory of Mrs. Weasley and Sirius arguing over the dinner table in Grimmauld Place (_"He's not your son!" "He's as good as!"_) arose. Then he was thinking of the way Sirius had died again, and then he looked at Teddy and thought of Remus and Tonks' bodies, and then Andromeda had grabbed him by the wrist.

Mrs. Weasley was looking a warning at Andromeda, but no one seemed to have been hexed and the conversation was over. He would definitely have to ask Andromeda what she'd said if he could ever stop thinking about the way Fred had been _laughing_, almost like Sirius had been _laughing_, when it clearly wasn't funny.

"Perhaps you ought to let me Apparate you," Andromeda said to Harry, and Harry had no objection. He had found the energy to handle the matter of the Elder Wand because it needed handling, but now he was more than happy to let someone else deal with minor concerns, like whether he splinched himself or lay down and didn't get up for a few days.

X

The first thing Harry did when Andromeda had Apparated them back to her house was take a shower. Washing off the remnants of grime and sweat and tears was secondary to washing off the essence of the Chosen One.

"_But, the population at large does seem to love me and take my safety seriously, I must admit. When I say I am treated well, they are disinclined to believe me unless they see it with their own eyes."_

Had he actually _said_ that? Who talked like that?

His stomach gave a lurch of disgust, and he was glad that it was empty.

Of course, the first thing Andromeda did when he came downstairs was tell him that he was absolutely required to eat. When he insisted that he wasn't hungry, she assured him that she had deliberately made the soup as bland as possible and that he could eat it or be escorted to St. Mungo's.

He felt a twinge of retroactive sympathy for the teenage Tonks. There was more overlap between Andromeda's mothering style and Mrs. Weasley's than he had previously suspected.

That reminded him. "What did you say to Mrs. Weasley at the joke shop?" He hoped she wouldn't ask why he didn't know. He'd been standing right there, after all.

"Try the soup and I'll tell you."

Harry tried the soup. It _was_ bland, but it felt surprisingly good as it hit his stomach. Almost at once, his disjointed thoughts began to stick together once more and bend themselves to his will. Andromeda smirked victoriously; Harry might have been irritated if he hadn't been so… not tired, exactly, but certainly worn out.

"I thanked Molly for the love she showed my daughter, and made it plain that I never considered Nymphadora's affection for Molly to be a threat to her relationship with me. After that it was hard for her to begrudge me a few days with you, especially when we all know that this is not about you choosing me, it's about you avoiding looking at little Ginevra across the breakfast table."

"Can we not talk about Ginny?" Harry asked quickly, although some part of him that was mostly asleep was slightly bemused to hear her called "little Ginevra."

Andromeda agreed with a gesture. "There is one thing I'd like to talk to you about, but it isn't Ginny. You don't have to say anything, but I want you to listen."

"All right." Harry was most of the way through the soup, and by now it tasted very good.

"I want to tell you that I'm sorry." Harry's head shot up. It wasn't often that anyone apologized to him. He had been held up as a liar and ridiculed in almost every way you could ridicule someone during his fifth year at Hogwarts. When it had turned out that he was right, the world had gone straight from ostracizing him to demanding that he risk his life to be its savior without anything like an apology in between. "I misjudged you from the first time I met you and I didn't treat you fairly. You are a wonderful godfather to Teddy and I know you'll only get better at it as he grows up. I'm glad that you didn't let me go too far down the road of distancing you from Teddy, because I would have been punishing him needlessly as well as disregarding the wishes of his parents, who obviously had the measure of you long before I did. "

Harry was glad that Andromeda had told him that he didn't have to say anything, because he had absolutely no idea what he would have said if speaking had been required.

"When I went to Malfoy Manor to get Narcissa to help me open that vault, she offered to let Teddy stay there with the house-elves and her son."

"You _didn't_," Harry blurted out, appalled, before he realized that of course she hadn't; Teddy had been with them at Gringotts.

"I didn't. I haven't gone anywhere without Teddy since Nymphadora—well, since the Battle of Hogwarts. The only person in the world I could trust to look after him without me there is you."

Harry started to wish that the food hadn't made his mind less fuzzy. This could get very awkward, very fast. It wasn't quite on the level of the time he'd told Dumbledore that he was his man and Dumbledore had been moved to tears, but it was still remarkably uncomfortable. He almost forgot to be flattered and pleased that Andromeda was apparently going to let him have a larger role in Teddy's life with no argument.

Andromeda had stopped speaking, apparently waiting for Harry to return his complete attention to her. When he did, she spoke again as if she had not been interrupted.

"One last thing. The next time you're inclined to be somewhere other than where you are, please consider coming to visit Teddy and me as an alternative to shutting yourself up in a completely unsafe place where no one can find you if you need help. You're welcome here for hours, days, weeks, as long as you want, regardless of whether it makes Molly Weasley or anyone else jealous."

Harry started to object to the insult to Mrs. Weasley. Andromeda raised her hand to stop him.

"I'm not saying I blame Molly for being jealous, of course. I don't see how anyone, from her to Sirius to me, is supposed to avoid wanting to fuss over you. You're a wonderful young man, Harry. Now," she added in the same breath, continuing to spare Harry the trouble of coming up with an appropriate response, "please go upstairs and wake Teddy if he hasn't already woken. He went down for his nap late, and if he isn't up now there's no chance he'll sleep through the night. Give him a bottle, too, and let me know if he won't take it."

Harry took the proffered escape gratefully.

Just as he entered Teddy's room, he heard the muffled beginnings of crying. "Right on time," he told his godson.

Teddy's chin wobbled, but he held off on shrieking, apparently willing to let Harry have a go at fixing whatever was troubling him before launching into a full-fledged tantrum.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Harry told him. "I got one of those from your grandmother today, too. So maybe we'll spend more time together. Would you like that?"

Teddy didn't give Harry an answer one way or the other. He did, however, seem to approve of having his wet nappy exchanged for a clean one. He was even more pleased when Harry warmed a bottle with his wand and slipped the nipple into Teddy's mouth.

"Good Teddy. Good godson," Harry praised. "I'll tell your grandmother she needn't threaten you with St. Mungo's as well." Harry settled into a chair so he could hold Teddy more comfortably while he drank. The photograph of Remus and Tonks he had noticed the last time he'd been in Teddy's room was in plain sight. He sighed, but the onslaught of memories was less overwhelming than it had been inside the vault.

"I really miss your parents," he continued, as Teddy remained oblivious, or even rather pleased. "It's not fair that they aren't here with you. That's what my godfather always had to say to me, too, so I know where I'm coming from. But you and I are going to get a lot more time together than Sirius and I did, okay?"

Teddy finished the bottle and crinkled his eyebrows at Harry. "Are you trying to tell me something or just showing off?" Harry asked. "Should we go downstairs?" He carefully raised Teddy to eye-level so they were nearly nose-to-nose. "Yes?" He nodded his head exaggeratedly, not quite sure what was prompting him to do so. Then he noticed that Teddy's eyes had locked onto his and followed their movement.

"_Brilliant_," Harry whispered, so completely amazed that all maudlin thoughts about children losing parents and parents losing children and sisters losing brothers flew from his mind. "Could you do that three days ago? You looked a lot less focused then. You definitely have your Mum's eyes— she had her Mum's, too. And Sirius, come to that, and your crazy great aunts. Regulus probably did as well, but I never met him."

Harry broke off his musings on Teddy's family tree as he and Teddy returned to the kitchen. Teddy cooed at the sight of Andromeda, who quickly came forward to kiss his head.

"Did I hear you mention Regulus on the stairs?"

Harry, having been caught out, decided that now would not be the time to lie. "Yes."

"Was that an astronomy lesson or a family history lesson?"

"I was looking at his eyes—did you know he can follow with them when you move back and forth now?—and I noticed that, well, they're the same as Tonks'. And yours, and Sirius', and well, obviously I never met Regulus so I don't know if he had them too."

At that moment, Andromeda didn't appear to know quite what to make of Harry. Harry hoped she wasn't reconsidering everything she'd said before he'd gone upstairs to fetch Teddy.

"Regulus had the family eyes," she told him slowly. "When you have cousins marrying cousins as often as the Blacks did, you don't get much physical variation after a while. Why the interest in Regulus? He's been dead since before you were born, and long before he died he'd decided to have nothing to do with Sirius or with me. He never met Nymphadora."

Harry tensed slightly. He immediately thought of two answers, one of which was entirely true and one of which was true but misleading. He went with the latter first; then he would have time to consider how much of the truth he should tell.

He felt a pang of sympathy for Remus, Sirius, and Dumbledore, each of whom had spent years trying to decide what Harry should be told of his past. He hadn't given them enough credit, really.

"Kreacher was very fond of Regulus," Harry began. "And when it came down to whether Kreacher was going to help me willingly or be on the lookout for a way to betray me like he did Sirius, one thing that really helped was giving him something that belonged to Regulus. He ran into the battle at Hogwarts yelling Regulus' name."

"Which is a little odd considering that Regulus was a Death Eater. Sirius suspected that he'd had second thoughts and been killed as a result, but I don't imagine the house-elf would have known that or adjusted his priorities accordingly if he had. House-elves tend to focus on what's directly before them, not on over-arching political ideals."

Harry hadn't counted on Andromeda drawing those conclusions so quickly. He was going to have to tell her just about everything.

There was no reason that one of Regulus' few surviving relatives shouldn't know what he'd done, of course, but he was ill at ease advising Andromeda that he knew more about the cousin she'd grown up with than she did. More importantly, he couldn't very well get into a discussion of Horcruxes when he, Ron, and Hermione had agreed not to tell anyone but Kingsley Shacklebolt and Professor McGonagall.

"While I was… doing some things Professor Dumbledore asked me to do before he died, I found out that Voldemort didn't kill Regulus. He didn't order him killed, either. When Regulus changed his mind, he… well, he set himself a suicide mission. He was in a position where he knew something about Voldemort's plans, and he found a way to interrupt them. He did the exact thing Dumbledore told me to do, part of it. He knew he'd die doing it, but he did it anyway—loads better than letting Voldemort do him in or sticking with the Death Eaters."

"How in Merlin's name do you know all this?"

Harry unconsciously tightened his grip on Teddy, as if the baby could help him. "I'd rather not say. I'm sorry if this—if you'd rather I hadn't brought it up."

"No," said Andromeda quickly. "I—well, I hadn't thought about him much until recently. We never were close. He was closest to Cissy out of all of us, really, and he was still a child when I was disowned. I'm glad to know, though. I wish there was a way to let him know how proud I am of him for it."

Harry thought of the whispers behind the veil in the Ministry of Magic and the figures walking out of the Forbidden Forest to meet him. "He knows. I think he must know."

As Harry looked around the room at anything that wasn't Andromeda, he noticed an envelope with his name on it. As it was addressed to him, he reached for it.

"The Weasleys sent this letter along with your clothes. Apparently it was delivered to you at the Burrow."

Harry turned the letter over in his hands. He didn't recognize the handwriting; no one alive had ever sent him letters other than Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and sometimes Hogwarts or the Ministry of Magic. This hadn't come from any of them.

As he unfolded the parchment, he found that it wasn't parchment at all, but paper. The letter had come from, of all people, Dudley.

_Hi Harry,_

_Thank you for the rabbit. I'm not sure what Mary thinks of it (she's six days old today), but her mum and I think it's pretty cool._

_I'm really glad you wrote for another reason. Do you know if when someone is magic it shows up right away? Is there a way to tell? Mum and Dad said they always knew about you, but we didn't know until that giant told you that day. Just wondering._

_Dudley_

Harry was torn between pity for six-days-old Mary and amusement at the delicious irony of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's precious Diddy-Dinkums presenting them with a grandchild who might one day receive a Hogwarts letter.

"Andromeda?" he asked through his snickers. "How soon can you tell whether a baby is magic or not?"

_To be continued._

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_**Author's note**__: If you happen to be interested in what Narcissa did after she helped Andromeda rescue Harry, check my author page for a short side-story called _Naked Reverence_. And welcome to the readers who found this story because of that one:-)_

_**Next chapter**__: Harry does a few things he's been avoiding. So does Andromeda. And so does…Dudley? _

_Review?_


	17. Future

_**Disclaimer**__: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended._

* * *

Harry had once thought that after the events of his eleventh birthday, nothing would ever surprise him again. But then there had been acceptance into the Weasley family, Ginny opening the Chamber of Secrets, the appearance of the godfather he didn't remember, the brilliant professor who had turned out to be a werewolf, the disastrous end to the Triwizard Tournament, the Order of the Phoenix, Grimmauld Place, Dumbledore's Army, the prophecy that had made him the Chosen One, Tom Riddle's past, the Hallows, Severus Snape's love for Lily Evans… when the last battle had been won, he had thought, surely, there could be no more surprises. Everything else must necessarily be an anticlimax.

Then he found himself holding his turquoise-haired godson under the awning of a café in London and awaiting the arrival of Dudley and his daughter.

Apparently surprises didn't stop just because you learned you were a wizard or came through the defeat of Lord Voldemort physically unscathed (unless you wanted to count the scars from last Christmas, which Harry really didn't).

"Sorry I'm late," broke into Harry's thoughts.

Dudley, who so far as Harry knew had never apologized to anyone in his entire life unless he was well-paid or afraid of imminent bodily harm, was apologizing to Harry for being all of five minutes late. The world was definitely full of new and strange things.

"That's all right." He looked at the pink bundle in the sling around Dudley's neck. "This is Mary?"

"Yeah," said Dudley with a strange combination of embarrassment and pride Harry had never expected to see on his cousin. Dudley used one enormous hand to pull the pink blanket away from Mary's head with remarkable gentleness. The baby's round face was almost as pink as the blanket, and almost impossibly tiny. Harry felt Teddy's weight in his own arms and was reminded of how fast his godson was growing to be so much bigger than Mary, and only a few months older.

"She's beautiful," Harry said reflexively, but it was more or less true. Probably Mary looked like her mother, which was good luck for her.

"Thank you." Dudley gestured at Teddy. "This is your godson?"

Harry nodded. "Teddy Lupin, meet Dudley and Mary Dursley." Teddy cooed at Mary with apparent interest.

Dudley was studying Teddy's turquoise hair with a hint of Uncle Vernon's distaste for such things. Nor was he the only one; a passing Muggle was muttering something about it being child abuse to dye the hair of such a young baby. Not wanting to prolong this sort of gaping, Harry grabbed Dudley and maneuvered them both through the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon Alley.

Dudley was bigger and more heavily muscled than anyone else in the room, but he began to shake so visibly that Harry wondered that Mary wasn't disturbed.

"Everything's okay," Harry told Dudley awkwardly.

"Tell me again where we are?" asked Dudley, not bothering to deny that he was terrified or in shock or both.

"Diagon Alley," Harry said patiently. "It's a wizarding street that's hidden in London, just like Platform 9 ¾ is hidden in King's Cross. You have to know the gateway's there to use it."

"Why do wizards need their own streets?"

Harry shrugged. "To sell robes and cauldrons and stuff. To have somewhere where they can talk about magic without being overheard." He steered Dudley out of the Leaky Cauldron and toward Mr. Ollivander's wand shop, though he wasn't sure any longer if this was a good idea. Mr. Ollivander sometimes left Harry uneasy; he might reduce Dudley to a quivering blond pile of nerves, which Harry did not care to explain to Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia.

The shop looked abandoned, but Harry opened the door anyway. He knew that Mr. Ollivander was working here almost constantly, trying to replace the stock that had been stolen or damaged by the war. Just the day before Harry had written to Luna, of whom Mr. Ollivander was quite fond, and asked.

"Mr. Ollivander?" Harry called, trying to reduce the startling that was bound to occur when Mr. Ollivander inevitably appeared from nowhere. "It's Harry Potter."

Mr. Ollivander appeared behind the counter as suddenly as if he had Apparated. Dudley jumped; so, it must be admitted, did Harry. "Harry Potter," Mr. Ollivander repeated needlessly. "I don't know if I have a new wand that would match you, but I don't know if you need one."

Harry drew his Fawkes-feather wand for Mr. Ollivander's inspection. "It's been fixed."

Mr. Ollivander's eyebrows flew to the top of his head, but he made no comment. "And this," he said to Teddy, "Is Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks' child? A difficult customer for some wand-maker in eleven years, having had so many different forces in his past already."

"This is my cousin Dudley and his daughter Mary," Harry said, because Mr. Ollivander had given no sign that he noticed their presence.

Then Mr. Ollivander was in front of the counter and leaning close to Mary in one jerky, half-invisible movement. Dudley clenched his fists; Harry's grip tightened on his wand. It wouldn't do to have his champion-boxer cousin punch a frail old man who had spent 18 months in a dungeon. "Yes, yes, I see that she will have use for a wand as well."

"You're sure?" Harry asked.

"You can check and see that her name is down for Hogwarts if you wish for confirmation."

Harry nodded. The Hogwarts rolls weren't complete until soon before the admissions letters went out in the spring, but according to Andromeda they were a more reliable source than Mr. Ollivander. Still, Mr. Ollivander could usually sense a witch or wizard's magic upon first meeting; this was the result of many years spent making wands and matching them to their masters. Harry had wanted to avoid taking Dudley to Hogwarts if at all possible. Dudley was much changed from the boy he had been when he had bullied Harry so many years ago, but Harry still didn't feel like sharing Hogwarts with his cousin—especially not when Hogwarts was in such a sorry condition.

Dudley and Harry wandered outside and sat on a bench in a shadowy corner of the Alley.

"I knew it," Dudley whispered at last. "I tried to tell myself that I didn't see what I thought I saw, but growing up with you, and knowing what you turned out to be… it had to be."

"What did you see?" Harry asked, too curious to bother being respectful of Dudley's obvious distress.

"She was only a few days old. I was feeding her with a bottle, and I looked and the bottle wasn't put together right. _I know what I saw_. I was about to take it away from her to fix it, or get someone else to, but then it was fixed, and she was drinking." Dudley shuddered. The only other time Harry had seen Dudley look so drawn and pale had been moments after they'd both nearly died in a dementor attack. "There's no way to make it stop, is there? Mum and Dad tried it with you."

"No, there's no way to stop it."

"So when she gets one of those… letters in eleven years, she'll have to go?"

"She doesn't _have_ to, any more than you have to put her in any other school that accepts her. She has a choice."

"That giant didn't give you a choice."

"He didn't give Uncle Vernon a choice," Harry corrected. "I wanted to go."

"Why would you want to go anywhere where they have those… dementor-things?" Dudley looked worriedly at his daughter, who was still asleep.

"They don't have dementors at the school. With the war over, those aren't around much at all. There are ways to deal with them if they turn up, like anything else." Dudley looked unconvinced, and Harry seized the opportunity to ask a question that had been niggling at the back of his mind for several years now. "What did you see when the dementors attacked us that night?"

For a moment, Harry doubted that Dudley would answer. He could hardly blame his cousin; he wasn't inclined to tell Dudley how he reacted to dementors, either. But Dudley was well aware of most of the horrors of Harry's life, and so far as Harry knew nothing remotely unpleasant had ever happened to Dudley until this past year. Dudley had always been the one inflicting unpleasantness on others. Then, though, Dudley spoke.

"I saw… I saw what I reckon you always saw when you looked at me when we were growing up." Harry almost laughed at that. He had seen an over-indulged, thoughtless, self-centered, destructive bully with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. Dudley had seemed to enjoy that position, so why would the dementor… oh. Dudley was actually saying he _hadn't_ liked what he'd seen when the dementor had forced him to look at himself.

Harry was startled enough by this revelation that he nearly missed what Dudley said next.

"I'm sorry. All those things I did… I don't know why I did them. Even the day that dementor came—"

"No big deal," Harry said, although it had been the biggest of all possible deals when he'd been five, or seven, or ten years old.

"Really—"

Harry waved him off. "Someone smart told me once that a lot of people are idiots when they're fifteen, and they grow out of it."

"If my parents find out about Mary, I don't know if they'll like her any better than they like you," Dudley said bluntly.

Harry looked at the little girl thoughtfully. "Uncle Vernon—I can't help you there. But Aunt Petunia—I found out some stuff about her recently. She and my Mum were really close when they were growing up."

"Until Aunt Lily went off to that school."

"Right. Because Aunt Petunia was jealous." A vein popped on Dudley's forehead, making him look like Uncle Vernon always had when he was especially angry with Harry, but Dudley didn't say anything. He wouldn't, not surrounded by magic and unsure of how to escape. That gave Harry the chance to forge ahead. "She didn't think it was fair that my Mum could live in a castle and learn to fly and make things appear and disappear with a magic wand when she couldn't. She wrote a letter to the headmaster of Hogwarts begging to be let in. I think maybe… if you broke it to her the right way that her granddaughter is going to have that chance… she wouldn't mind too much."

Dudley appeared to be thinking, of all things. The day grew more and more bizarre. "It's a long time from now," he said at last.

"Yeah," Harry agreed.

They stood up at the same time, more in sync than they had ever been before. "I have to take Mary back to her mother. She won't like Mary being outside for so long, but I had to know."

Harry nodded. "Teddy and I have to go to Hogwarts. The rebuilding party is today. The last battle kind of blew it up," he said as lightly as he could.

"You're taking him there?" Dudley asked as they walked back toward the gateway to the Muggle world.

"His grandmother will probably meet us. This is the first time she let anyone take Teddy anywhere without her. It's hard for her. But it's also hard for her to go somewhere where there's loads of people since Teddy's mum died." Harry cringed inwardly as he considered that his plans almost forced Andromeda to come to the site of her daughter's death. But Andromeda had agreed to it, and these past several weeks had taught him that  
Andromeda did _not_ allow herself to be forced into much of anything.

They reached the gateway and Harry gestured Dudley through. Dudley turned at the last moment. "Maybe I could let you know how it goes when Mum finds out about Mary?"

"I'd like that," Harry told him. He thought that he just might be telling the truth, too.

X

Harry and Teddy traveled from Diagon Alley to Hogwarts by a combination of Apparition and Floo Powder. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of Harry's stomach as the school arose before them. His meeting with Dudley had gone better than anyone could possibly expect a meeting with Dudley to go. Parts of it had even been something like pleasant.

The day couldn't possibly keep going this well. All through the war, very good things had always happened in tandem with very bad things. And he was, after all, revisiting the scene of the final battle. This was where Teddy's parents had died.

"I hope you can love it here someday, even though this is where your parents were killed," Harry whispered to Teddy. "I think they'd want you to love it, but I know that what someone who died on you would have wanted doesn't always make a difference."

Teddy was looking off in the other direction, and when his hair changed from turquoise to tomato-red, Harry knew why. The sinking feeling in his stomach got worse.

"You'd better help me out here," he ordered Teddy before he followed his godson's gaze.

Ginny looked beautiful. But then, she always did.

"Ron and Hermione are waiting for you down by the potions room," Ginny said in a perfectly neutral sort of way.

"Thank you," said Harry, irritated because he didn't think he sounded at all neutral.

"Sure." Ginny continued on her way, her long soft hair swinging behind her in a way that Harry was sure was designed to taunt him.

"Wait."

Ginny waited.

"I'm sorry I said what I said the other day."

Ginny no longer looked remotely neutral. "I'm sorry for what I did." Her words came out in a rush. "I was insulted when you said that, but you had a point, and I won't—well I'll try not to lose my temper like that anymore. Not because you or anyone else told me to, but because that's not the kind of person I want to be."

"It's not the kind of person you are," said Harry.

"I don't know what kind of person I am half the time."

Harry couldn't argue with that. He knew the feeling. "Do you think you might be the kind of person who would go out with me even though I've been a prat?"

Her brown eyes blazed with delight. "Definitely."

"Thank Merlin," said Harry with real relief.

"Like you had to ask," Ginny returned. "I can't remember a time when I didn't want—well, we both know you've never been as enthusiastic about the idea as I have."

"That isn't true. All last year, I would take out the Marauder's Map and stare at your name. I'd think about what you were doing, and how your life could be anything you wanted it to be when all my life could be about was Voldemort. I'd think about you playing Quidditch and I'd want to be flying with you, or at least cheering you on. I'd think about you starting a—well, I'd think of you and I'd want to be part of whatever you were doing."

"That can be arranged. We have time now." With a last beautiful smile, Ginny went on her way, saying something about helping Neville, Luna, and Professor Sprout repair a greenhouse and reminding Harry to go find Ron and Hermione in the dungeons.

X

"Why are we down here?" Harry asked Ron and Hermione by way of greeting as he reached the otherwise-deserted potions classroom.

Hermione, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor laughing at something Ron had said, jumped up and gave Harry a kiss on the cheek.

"The heads of house did the assignments. Professor McGonagall asked us to work down here because she wanted people she was sure wouldn't try to do anything to jinx the Slytherin parts of the castle," said Hermione.

"Which proves she doesn't know us very well after all those years in her house," said Ron with a wink and mock-regret. Harry grinned. He was more pleased than he cared to admit by their assignment. The walls were covered with Dark symbols and decorations in praise of Lord Voldemort. Cleaning them would be difficult work, but it wouldn't be the emotional upheaval of reassembling the battered Great Hall or the corridors that had been littered with bodies.

After Teddy was settled in a cleverly conjured playpen and magical cleaning supplies had been sorted and mixed, they set to work restoring the walls to their previous state of unbroken dullness. They tried every charm they knew, but the most effective tactic seemed to be soap, water, and a strong arm.

"Wherever Snape is, he's having a laugh," grumbled Ron, and Harry had to agree. Still, there was something peaceful about being at Hogwarts with Ron and Hermione when nothing more dangerous than sore arms was in their immediate future. It almost made him want to rethink his decision to forgo his seventh year of school and join the Auror program.

Almost.

"I've been thinking," he told his two best friends.

"Why would you want to do a thing like that?" Ron asked. Hermione smiled, letting Harry know that he had her attention as well.

"I didn't _want_ to. It just happened."

"Oh. Go on, then."

"I don't want to go back to school. Not full time, not part time. Tomorrow I'm telling Kingsley I'm ready for the Auror program."

Ron and Hermione caught one another's eye with a chuckle.

"What?" Harry wanted to know.

"We've been thinking about that, too, these last couple of days," Hermione said.

"The Auror program?" Harry asked, allowing himself to hope that they wouldn't have to go their separate ways just yet even though he knew what Hermione's answer would be. The last time they'd discussed their plans for the future, Hermione had referred to the war as an "interruption" in their education. Hermione had fought the war bravely and brilliantly, but she hadn't done it because she felt called to spend the rest of her life keeping Dark magic in its place.

"I have to come back properly," said Hermione, confirming Harry's thought. "I would never feel right for the rest of my life if I didn't have my NEWTS."

"I know you wouldn't," Harry said, admiration temporarily overwhelming sadness. "Ron?" he asked. "Are you coming back too?" Ron had never been a terribly serious student, but he was under a spell of Hermione's that had nothing to do with the magic taught at Hogwarts.

Ron's loud laugh bounced off of the dungeon walls. "Good one, mate. No." He sobered quickly. "My brother—George—well, don't spread this around, but you've probably noticed his magic isn't what it's supposed to be right now. It's one of those things that happens when you have a bad enough shock. He can't run the shop by himself. I've been away from my family for a year. It's my turn to do something to help. Maybe I can join you with the Aurors in a couple of years when everyone's more on their feet?"

"That would be brilliant," Harry said as he concentrated on scrubbing an especially stubborn stain off of the wall.

"We'll still see each other all the time," said Hermione, and even though it wasn't quite true Harry appreciated her saying it.

"Especially if we're still here trying to get these walls clean when September first comes," Ron added. "Snape must've had a secret will that said we had to do this. He _planned_ it, I'm telling—"

Before their eyes, the stain vanished. "I don't think anyone planned for you to clean the walls like a Muggle," Andromeda said as she entered the classroom and reached for Teddy. Teddy snuggled happily into his grandmother's arms, flickering his hair from ginger to brown in greeting.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked from the suddenly-clean wall to Andromeda and back again. "We tried every spell we knew!" they protested in unison.

"Tonks did say her mother was really good at this kind of thing," Hermione remembered aloud. "Teach us?"

Andromeda demonstrated her spell again while they were all watching. True to form, Hermione picked it up almost instantly and began practicing happily, more amused than annoyed by Ron's commentary.

"Are you going to stay?" Harry asked Andromeda. She gave him a slightly haughty look, but by now Harry had learned that that was something she did when she was nervous.

"I'll stay long enough for Teddy to show off for everyone who wants to meet him," she conceded.

"Oh, for the whole day, then," Harry teased. There were hundreds of witches and wizards working today. Most of them had known Remus or Tonks, and the rest would be fascinated by the infant Metamorphmagus.

"Probably," Andromeda admitted.

"Do you want me to help run interference?" Harry didn't want to forgo any time with Ron and Hermione, especially knowing that they would be in very different places when the summer ended, but Teddy was his godson and his responsibility.

"Stay with your friends. We'll come get you if we need you, and we'll check in before we leave."

"All right."

As Harry watched Andromeda and Teddy head out of the classroom, he thought that it was nice that they would see him before they left Hogwarts. It was nice, too, that he would hear from newly-tolerable Dudley and Mary. Best of all was the knowledge that Ron and Hermione—

A wet sponge, no longer useful in light of Andromeda's impromptu charms lesson, hit Harry on the side of his face.

He caught it before it hit the floor and hurled it back, because a water fight with Ron was really a perfectly good way to spend an afternoon at Hogwarts in the first summer after the death of Lord Voldemort.

**The End**

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_Author's Note__: Thank you for playing with me!_

_I have a few more Potter-related thoughts rattling around my brain and my hard drive, so there may be another fic in my future. If there is, though, it will not make an attempt at canon-compliance. There's too much in canon that I don't like—such as most of my favorite characters, you know, DYING! _

_This fic actually came from a very malicious place. I developed an irrational, retroactive hate for the Weasley family when Ms. Rowling announced that Tonks (who I liked) and Remus (who I adored) died to make up for Arthur living. I resented the fact that most of the surviving characters were Weasleys to begin with or became Weasleys by marriage while almost everyone else was killed off. So I decided Andromeda could be a non-Weasley force in Harry's life. _

_Yes, I understand that this is ridiculous. Not quite as ridiculous as my managing to use the name "Sirius" 264 times (yes, I counted) in a fic that takes place two years after his death… but ridiculous._

_You've read this far. How about a review?_


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